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FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



FREEDOM IN THE 
CHURCH 

OR 

THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST 

AS THE LORD HATH COMMANDED, AND AS 
THIS CHURCH HATH RECEIVED THE 
SAME ACCORDING TO THE 
COMMANDMENTS OF GOD 

BY 

ALEXANDER V. G. ALLEN 

PROFESSOR IN THE EPISCOPAL THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL IN CAMBRIDGE J 
D.D. KENYON, HARVARD, AND YALE j AUTHOR OF 6i CONTINUITY 
OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT " J " CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS ' ' J 
* 'LIFE OF JONATHAN EDWARDS*'; "LIFE OF 
PHILLIPS brooks": etc. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
I907 

All rights reserved 



3^ 



1 



LIBRARY of 09NGSES3 
Two Cooies Received 

FEB 18 mt 

—Cooyright Entry 
CLASS A XXc,, No, 



Copyright, 1907, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1907. 



J. 8. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



PREFACE 



The situation in the American Episcopal 
Church calls for serious consideration in the 
interests of theology and of true religion. 
There are many issues at stake. Honesty in 
the recitation of the Creed is by no means 
the only question. Deeper motives lie be- 
neath the present disturbance than can be 
measured by the uncritical observer. No 
amount of practice in ethical theorizing quali- 
fies for judgment on the complicated issues 
of religion. For religion constitutes a de- 
partment of life by itself, independent of 
science, or ethics, or philosophy. There is 
danger that the cause of religious freedom 
and of freedom of inquiry in theology may 
be retarded indefinitely unless the emphasis 
be again placed upon freedom, the one pre- 
dominant motive of the Reformation in the 
sixteenth century which gave us the Book of 
Common Prayer. The desire for freedom, 
the determination to guard the liberty of both 



vi 



PREFACE 



clergy and laity then manifested was only 
another form of the demand of Magna Charta, 
" Libera sit ecclesia Anglicana." Other words 
which expressed the purpose of the Reformers 
and were often quoted were those of St. Paul, 
"Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith 
Christ hath made us free ; " and the words 
which follow, "And be not entangled again 
in the yoke of bondage/' Other kindred 
words come from our Lord Himself, " Ye 
shall know the truth, and the truth shall 
make you free, and if the Son shall make you 
free ye shall be free indeed/' This freedom 
is called in question when an interpretation is 
placed upon the vows of the Ordinal, foreign 
to their original intent, as if they were a 
business contract with a corporation in accord- 
ance with whose terms the clergy resign their 
freedom in Christ for certain material con- 
siderations, instead of a guarantee of Christian 
freedom, as in the intention of the Reformers 
they were meant to be. 

The difficulty about the Virgin-birth is 
but a symptom of a profounder disturbance 
which threatens to shift the base on which 
the Church was restored to its pristine purity 
at the Reformation. It is a difficulty not 
wholly created by the "higher criticism " or 



PREFACE 



vii 



engendered solely by scientific distrust of the 
miraculous. An effort has been made in the 
following paper to trace the difficulty to its 
remoter source in the history of theology in 
the ancient Church. It was through misin- 
terpretation of the Virgin-birth and the undue 
prominence assigned to it that the transition 
was made to the sterile form of Byzantine 
Christianity or to the impotency of the Latin 
Church in the ages preceding the Reformation. 

There is no denial in this treatise of the 
Virgin-birth. It is accepted as the miracu- 
lous or supernatural mode by which God 
became incarnate in Christ, as the resurrec- 
tion and the empty tomb mark the exodus of 
Christ from the world. But criticism is 
directed against the misinterpretation of the 
Gospel of the Infancy or against arguments 
used for its support which not only go beyond 
God's Word written, but give to it a promi- 
nence which changes the perspective of the 
Christian faith as revealed in Scripture. The 
Apostles' Creed needs to be supplemented by 
the postulate of the larger faith in the primary 
and essential importance of the life of Christ, 
and not only of His birth and passion, — His 
life and character, His deeds and teaching ; 
in other words, the historical Christ portrayed 



viii 



PREFACE 



for us in the Gospels. Out of this study is 
now arising a new conviction in the Divine 
leadership of Christ and of His mission to 
subdue the world unto Himself. 

Attention needs to be called anew, and con- 
stantly called, to the distinctive character of 
the Anglican Church as differing funda- 
mentally from the Roman Church on the one 
hand, and from the churches of Puritan de- 
scent on the other. Hence the preliminary 
chapter of this treatise is devoted to an effort 
describing the ruling ideas of the Church of 
England as incorporated in the Book of Com- 
mon Prayer. The pressure of Puritan opinion 
and prejudice is in America so great and 
widely diffused and its attitude tacitly assumed 
to be identical with Christianity itself, that the 
Anglican Church has been and is at a disad- 
vantage, and some of its cardinal truths re- 
garded as no better than a baptized Paganism. 
The Church, also, suffers from being regarded 
as a diluted form of Romanism. It is neither 
one nor the other. Romanism and Puritan- 
ism are more closely related in their deeper 
spirit to each other than is the Anglican 
Church related to either. 

A recent English writer has given the fol- 
lowing hopeful estimate of Anglicanism and 



PREFACE 



tx 



its possibilities, and his words may apply to 
the American Episcopal Church as well : — 

" It [the Church of England] can go 
forth courageously and face the world as 
it is, believing that God's revelation of 
Himself once made in the person of 
Christ Jesus is being continually explained 
to man by that progressive revelation of 
God's purpose which is continually being 
made by the Divine Government of the 
world. Steadfast in its hold on the faith 
and on the Sacraments by its unbroken 
link with the past, it exists for the main- 
tenance of God's truth and its applica- 
tion to the needs of man, not for the 
purpose of upholding its own power. A 
Church fitted for free men, training them 
in knowledge and in reverence alike ; 
disentangling the spirit from the form, 
because of its close contact with sons 
who love their mother and frankly speak 
out their minds ; not wandering among 
formulas, however beautiful, which have 
lost their meaning ; finding room in- 
creasingly for every form of devotional 
life, but training its graces into close 
connection with men's endeavors and 

I 

I 

i 



PREFACE 



aspirations; having no object of its own 
which it cannot explain and make mani- 
fest as being for the highest good of all. 
Afraid of nothing ; receptive of new im- 
pulses ; quick, watchful, alert ; proving 
all things and ever ready to give a reason 
for its principles and for their applica- 
tion ; exhorting, persuading, convincing ; 
so rooted in the past that it is strong in 
the present, and ever more hopeful for 
the future. For the great work of the 
Church of Christ is to mould the future, 
and so hasten the coming of the King- 
dom. Its eyes are turned to the past 
for instruction and warning, not for imi- 
tation. Steadfast in the faith, built upon 
the foundation which its Master laid, it 
can speak the truth in love, using such 
words and methods as men can best 
understand ; so penetrated by the im- 
portance of its message that it can speak 
it in manifold ways, to men of varying 
tempers and knowledge and feelings, but 
striving to speak it in such a way that 
the method of its teaching ever elevates 
and invigorates the taught. . . . Our 
difficulties and differences arise because 
we have not a sufficiently lofty concep- 



PREFACE 



tion of the destiny of the English Church. 
If any disaster befalls it, the record that 
shall be written hereafter will be that 
English Churchmen of this our day were 
not sufficiently large-hearted and high- 
minded to recognize the greatness of the 
heritage which was theirs/' 



Cambridge, 
January 26, 1907. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

Ruling Principles of the Anglican Church in the 

Age of the Reformation i 

CHAPTER II 

Historical Variations in the Interpretation of the 

Apostles' Creed ...... 32 

CHAPTER III 
The Vows of the Clergy, and Clerical Honesty . 66 

CHAPTER IV 

Interpretation of the Virgin-birth in the Ancient 

Church . . . . . . .101 



CHAPTER V 

The Virgin-birth and the Incarnation after the 

Fourth Century . . . . . .128 

xiii 



xiv CONTENTS 

CHAPTER VI 

PAGE 

Change in the Doctrine of the Incarnation at the 

Reformation . . . s . .161 



CHAPTER VII 
Modern Sensitiveness about the Virgin-birth . • 194 



I 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



/ 



Freedom in the Church 



CHAPTER I 

RULING PRINCIPLES OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 
IN THE AGE OF THE REFORMATION 

Among the more important changes which the 
Church made at the Reformation constituting its 
characteristics as the national Church of Eng- 
land, with which the American Episcopal Church 
is in agreement, are these : — 

In the first place the Augustinian theology 
in its dogmatic limitation was rejected, by mak- 
ing the emphatic assertion, which went to the 
root of Augustinianism and of the Calvinism then 
rising into power, that humanity had been 
potentially redeemed in Christ, or in the words 
of the Church Catechism, "I learn to believe in 
God the Son, who hath redeemed me and all 
mankind" For this was the negation of both 
Augustine and Calvin, that mankind had not 
been redeemed; that the world still lay under 
the curse and was a lost and ruined world even 
after the advent of Christ; that redemption 

B I 



2 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



was still something to be achieved, — it had been 
made possible for some, it had not actually been 
accomplished for all mankind or for the world. 
This thought of an actual and universal redemp- 
tion occurs again in the prayer of general 
thanksgiving: "We thank Thee for the redemp- 
tion of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ." 
In the light of this truth, the dogmas of elec- 
tion, pretention, or reprobation lose their sever- 
ity and change their character; embodying the 
inevitable comment on the realities of life, 
demanding recognition for their spiritual value ; 
their modification or rejection w T hen they become 
hinderances to the Christian life. (Article 
XVII. 1 ) 

Having got rid of the great negation which 
had kept the world in bondage in the Middle 
Ages, and was again in its Calvinistic form 

1 One of the common objections to the Thirty-nine Articles is 
that they teach (Art. XVII) the Calvinistic doctrine of predestina- 
tion. But when this Article is prefaced, as it should be, by the 
larger doctrine of the Church Catechism, that Christ "hath re- 
deemed me and all mankind" its language assumes the tone of 
common life, of literature, rather than of dogma. It is true, and 
who would have it otherwise, that the assurance of being called 
(vocation) is a most blessed one; while those who have it not are 
warned against the danger involved in dwelling upon its absence 
from their experience. Theology like this is not Calvinistic, nor 
Arminian; it is the attitude of a great Church, based upon the 
Gospel and illustrated by the realities of life. 



RULING PRINCIPLES 



3 



threatening human freedom in the age of the 
Reformation, the Anglican Church reproduces 
the ancient Catholic charter of human freedom, 
— the doctrine of the Trinity. In no other 
church in Christendom is so great prominence 
given to this central all-inclusive doctrine. In 
almost every part of the Prayer Book it appears, 
it is the constant, ever-recurring refrain, it opens 
the service, it is appended to every psalm 
and canticle, it is the essence of the creeds, the 
formula of blessing. It would not have been 
made so prominent if it were not closely con- 
nected with that which is most dear to every 
human heart, freedom from fear in the inner life 
of the soul, and freedom from the shackles 
without, from every tyranny whether of church 
or state. For the doctrine brings freedom by 
the proclamation of the coequality of the Son 
with the Father ; since Christ therefore is placed 
above kings; and thrones must henceforth 
retain their power by obedience to the will of 
Christ, — as the Lord Christ hath commanded. 
On this basis kingship in the English nation 
rested, and on this foundation it stood secure. 

The doctrine of the Trinity is the Magna 
Charta of ecclesiastical and religious liberty as 
against any invasion of liberty proceeding from 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



the secular throne. So long as kings ac- 
knowledge Christ as their head and master, 
the process must be toward emancipation of 
peoples from every form of bondage. But there 
were other forms of bondage which hampered the 
intellect and the conscience and prevented men 
from entering into the full possession of their 
inheritance. And one of these was an ancient 
error which obscured the Lordship of Christ 
and tended to make His presence and power in- 
operative. The Anglican Church set forth anew 
the doctrine of the Incarnation, and placed it 
again on an historic basis, by refusing any 
longer to ascribe to the Virgin Mother titles or 
attributes which exalted her above her Son — 
or led to her worship and finally to her practical 
installation in the place of Christ. This was 
one of the chief sources of evil in the Church 
before the Reformation, nullifying the Christian 
faith, tending to reduce it to the old nature wor- 
ship of the heathen world. The Anglican Church 
directed the axe to the root of the evil when it 
rejected from its formularies the title Mother 
of God (OeoroKos) as applied to Mary. Another 
designation of Mary, as "ever Virgin/' was 
also rejected. The absence of these desig- 
nations is striking, when one compares the 
Anglican ritual with the unreformed ritual of 



RULING PRINCIPLES 



S 



the Greek and Roman churches, where, and 
especially in the Greek offices, the terms " Mother 
of God" and "ever Virgin" are of frequent 
occurrence. Allowance should be made for a 
certain exuberance among Oriental peoples, 
where Western Christendom is more reserved. 
Thus in the Greek Church, the title "Brother of 
God" is given to St. James. St. Jerome did 
not hesitate to call a certain woman whose 
daughter had become a nun the "mother-in- 
law of God"; Joachim and Anna were the 
"grandparents of God." But whether the title 
"Mother of God" is or is not restricted in 
its use, it is misleading, and the Anglican 
Church rejected it altogether. On this point 
more will be said hereafter. The rejection of 
the term "Mother of God," as applied to 
Mary, and the rejection of her worship as well, 
left the way open for a more historic and in- 
telligible view of the incarnation by which the 
power of Christ, as the Word made flesh, was 
enhanced. 

The use of the phrase "Mother of God" (Oeoro- 
kos) had been sanctioned by General Councils in 
the ancient church ; but the Church of England 
was not intimidated by this circumstance in the 
effort to promote the freedom of her children 



6 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



from every form of bondage. Thus in regard 
to the authority of General Councils, it is de- 
clared in Article XXI : — 

" Forasmuch as they be an assembly of 
men, whereof all be not governed by the 
spirit and Word of God, they may err, and 
sometimes have erred y even in things pertain- 
ing to God. Wherefore things ordered by 
them as necessary to salvation have neither 
strength nor authority, unless it may be 
declared that they be taken out of Holy 
Scripture." 1 



1 Something of the attitude of the English Reformers, in regard 
to General Councils, may be inferred from the circumstances that 
the famous words of Gregory of Nazianzum were cited when the 
call of the Pope for a General Council at Mantua was under dis- 
cussion in 1537. That Gregory was prejudiced and sore at heart 
over his own personal experience does not diminish the significance 
of recalling his words at the moment when it was attempted to 
heal the difficulties of the time by resort to a council. In writing 
to the Emperor, Theodosius, Gregory had remarked that he shunned 
all councils: "I have never yet seen that any synod had a good 
ending, or that the evils complained of were removed but were 
rather multiplied. Since the spirit of dispute and the love of 
power (and do not think I am using too strong language) are 
exhibited there beyond all powers of description. 99 And again, 
"I keep myself at a distance from them, since I have found by 
experience that most of them (to express myself in moderation) 
are not worth much. ,, Cf. "Life of Gregory/' by Uliman, p. 241 ; 
and Burnet, "History of the Reformation," i. 353. 



\ 



RULING PRINCIPLES 



7 



From this statement coupled with the rejection 
of the phrase "Mother of God" from her formu- 
laries, it is to be inferred that on this point the 
Anglican Church regarded the Fourth General 
Council as having actually erred in things pertain- 
ing to God. The implications of that unfor- 
tunate phrase led to the degeneration of theology 
and to the lowering of the tone of spiritual and 
moral life, from the fifth century onward. The 
designation " Mother of God " was rejected 
at the Reformation not only by the Anglican 
Church, but by the Lutheran Church, and by 
the Reformed Church in all its branches. 

The Anglican Church subjected the decisions 
of General Councils to the authority of Scrip- 
ture ; but she went further than this in the effort 
to get rid of that vague, undetermined, and in- 
determinable authority known as " Catholicity," 
which haunted the Reformers as it haunts their 
descendants to-day. And again, in Scripture, 
as the Word of God, the relief and escape were 
found. In the VHIth Article it is declared that 
"The three creeds, the Nicene Creed, Athana- 
sius's Creed, and that which is commonly called 
the Apostles' Creed, ought thoroughly to be 
received and believed, for they may be proved 
by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture." 



8 \ FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



What is significant here is the abandonment of 
the authority of the Catholic Church as the 
ground or warrant for their acceptance. 1 

The Anglican Reformation gave a new defini- 
tion of the "Catholic Church" as that phrase 
finds expression in the creeds. Hitherto it had 
been understood in different ways, — the Greek 
Church and the Roman Church each claiming 
to be exclusively the Catholic Church, each de- 
nouncing the other as heretical and schismatic. 
According to this new, enlarged and Biblical 
conception given in the XlXth Article, — 

"The visible Church of Christ is a con- 
gregation of faithful men, in the which the 
pure Word of God is preached, and the 
Sacraments be duly ministered according 
to Christ's ordinance in all those things that 
of necessity are requisite to the same." 

The Catholic Church is further defined in 
the "Prayer for all sorts and conditions of 
men" : — 

"More especially we pray for the good es- 
tate of the Catholic Church ; that it may be 

1 The American Episcopal Church omitted the Athanasian 
Creed, but retains the VHIth Article in other respects unchanged. 



RULING PRINCIPLES 



9 



so guided and governed by thy Good Spirit, 
that all who profess and call themselves 
Christians may be led into the way of truth, 
and hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the 
bond of peace, and in righteousness of 
life." 1 

In the "Bidding Prayer," given in the Canons 
of 1604, set forth by authority of Convocation, 
the definition of the Catholic Church is more 
explicit still : — 

"In all sermons, lectures, and homilies, 
the preachers and ministers shall move the 
people to join with them in prayer in this 
form or to this effect as briefly as con- 
veniently they may: Ye shall pray for 
Christ's holy Catholic Church, that is, for 
the whole congregation of Christian people 
dispersed throughout the whole world." 
{Canon 55.) 

Of this Church, composed of all Christian 
people, it is further alleged that no organized 
branch is infallible : — 

1 In the American Episcopal Church, the word "universal" is 
substituted for " Catholic. " The same usage had been adopted 
in the creeds by the Lutheran Church. 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



"As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, 
and Antioch have erred, so also the Roman 
Church hath erred, not only in their living 
and manner of ceremonies, but also in mat- 
ters of Faith." (Article XX.) 

The infallibility which the Anglican Church 
refuses to the ancient historic churches, she does 
not claim for herself. Infallibility is no longer 
to be held as a mark of the Church. Every- 
thing must be tested by the appeal to Scripture. 
There are things, however, which are not con- 
tained in Scripture, such as rites and ceremonies. 
In respect of these, the Church of England 
claimed authority, — "the power to decree rites 
and ceremonies, and also authority in contro- 
versies of faith." But here again, the higher 
authority is invoked: "It is not lawful for the 
Church to ordain anything that is contrary to 
God's Word written." (Article XX.) And of 
the discipline and worship, as w T ell as of the 
doctrine, the Anglican Church has ordered that 
they be ministered "as Christ hath commanded," 
and "according to the commandment of God," 
which means that the commandments of men 
have been set aside. 



RULING PRINCIPLES 



ii 



It must be borne in mind that in the Refor- 
mation, the old scholasticism of the ancient 
church and the Middle Ages still bore heavily 
upon the minds and consciences of those who 
had received the "new learning/' and who, by 
the study of Greek, had seen a new meaning in 
Scripture. The tendency of the Reformation 
was away from dogmatic subtleties and refine- 
ments to the intellectual freedom and the larger 
life of the modern world. The purpose of the 
Reformation was primarily religious and ethical ; 
and wherever in the Prayer Book the reformers 
introduced comment or exhortation, the stress 
was laid upon the moral duties of life and the 
character of the Christian man. No contrast in 
the history of theology is more striking than this 
oasis of the epoch of the Reformation, between 
the cumbrous scholasticism of the mediaeval 
world, as developed, for example, by Thomas 
Aquinas, where unwarranted intellectual in- 
ferences were raised to the equality with divine 
revelation; this, on the one hand, and the 
scholasticism of the seventeenth century, whether 
in the Anglican Church, the Lutheran, or the 
Reformed. The hyper-orthodoxy of the seven- 
teenth century, with its excessive intellectualism, 
represented among the Puritans by the West- 
minster Confession, or by such writers as 



12 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 

Pearson in the Church of England, or by the 
more luxuriant forms which the same tendency 
took in Germany, prepared the way for the 
descent of the eighteenth century into every 
phase of scepticism or unbelief. Deism was 
the natural sequence of the ultra orthodox, dog- 
matic spirit which has made the seventeenth 
century unattractive, obnoxious, and almost 
unintelligible. 

The Church of England cannot be under- 
stood or appreciated unless this circumstance be 
borne in mind. The influence of Erasmus was 
felt in England more powerfully than in his own 
country, and the Erasmian tendency was toward 
the ethical and undogmatic side of the Christian 
faith as brought out in his Enchiridion. His 
Paraphrase of the New Testament was placed 
in the churches, to be read for the light it threw 
on Scripture. During the first half of the six- 
teenth century the warfare was kept up against 
the old scholastic dogmatism, till it became dis- 
credited and fell into the obloquy from which 
it has never emerged. This dogmatic bondage 
was one of the evils which the men of the "new 
learning" were seeking to overcome; among 
them Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, to whom we owe the Book of Common 
Prayer, and whose influence pervades the Thirty- 



RULING PRINCIPLES 



J 3 



nine Articles. The result is a certain undog- 
matic character in the formularies of the Anglican 
Church, which has been one of its greater charms 
for thoughtful minds. The Christian verities 
are there and each in its due proportion, but they 
are stated in undogmatic ways, in the language 
of religion and of life, rather than of theology. 
The atonement of Christ is impressively set 
forth in the office for the administration of the 
Lord's Supper, but nowhere is any theory or doc- 
trine of the atonement presented, — Anselmic, 
Grotian, or any other. And did we not keep 
this point in view, it would seem extraordinary 
that the Anglican Church, while giving supreme 
importance to Scripture, nowhere lays down any 
rule for the interpretation of Scripture or any 
theory of inspiration. Puritans and Lutherans 
and Romanists might look askance, as indeed 
they did at such a church, but wisdom is justi- 
fied of her children. The Anglican Church be- 
came in consequence the most comprehensive 
church in Christendom, free in spirit and in 
truth, trusting to the instincts which demand 
the Christian faith in its simplicity, and for the 
rest, building upon and appealing to " sound 
learning," as at once her justification and de- 
fence. What Lord Bacon was to science in 
opening up a new world of thought and research, 

1 %' 
I . 



FREEDOM IX THE CHURCH 



free from the trammels of the preceding ages, 
that the Church of England was for true religion 
and piety and a consecrated learning, whose 
aim was truth and reality as more important 
than any figments of imagination however 
imposing. Scripture became the guarantee 
against an ecclesiastical rationalism claiming 
to improve on God's Word written; a strong 
tower of defence, from the invasion of the 
scholastic tendency, — "the Word of God" 
and "containing all things necessary to salva- 
tion. " The Church of England, says Bishop 
Creighton, "did not commit the fatal error of 
erecting a system, strong in an appearance of 
unchangeable organization, possessed with an 
answer to every question, and claiming in- 
fallible authority. It laid down decidedly 
enough the truths of the Catholic faith, it 
retained every vestige of primitive practice 
and of primitive organization; but it left 
ample room for liberty and did not pretend to 
remove from the individual his due share of 
responsibility. Its great process of reforma- 
tion was carried out by the recognition of a 
growth of knowledge. The wisdom of that 
decision has been abundantly proved by its 
results." 



RULING PRINCIPLES 



i5 



The undogmatic attitude of the Church of 
England may be further illustrated when the 
comparison is made with other churches. The 
Roman Church has a voluminous Catechism set 
forth by the Council of Trent, covering almost 
every point of controversy in the experience of a 
thousand years, and another large treatise con- 
taining the numerous theological definitions of 
Trent, together with the long dogmatic creed of 
Pius IV, which was thought necessary in addition 
to the shorter ancient creeds. And these large 
commentaries are in striking contrast with the 
very short Catechism of the Church of England 
and the brief Articles of Religion, contained 
in a few pages of the Prayer Book. The same 
contrast is noted in the case of the Greek Church, 
where, in addition to the definitions and decrees 
of eight General Councils held to be infallible, 
there is the "Orthodox Confession of the Eastern 
Church/' containing one hundred and twenty- 
six questions answered at great length; the 
elaborate "Confession of Dositheus," being "the 
eighteen decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem"; 
and the "Longer Catechism of the Orthodox 
Catholic Eastern Church," which is in itself 
alone a considerable volume. Or, in the case 
of the Puritan churches, it is suggestive to note 
how Catechism and Articles in the Prayer Book 



16 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



form less than a hundredth part in length of the 
Confession and the Longer and Shorter Cate- 
chisms set forth at Westminster. 

The contrast is still more impressive when we 
turn to the order and discipline of the Anglican 
Church. Here the reformers were engaged in 
emancipating the Church from the authority of 
the Papacy and also from that hard fixed dog- 
matic system of the Middle Ages, — the work of 
monastic students shut up in their cloisters and 
detached from the larger realities of life. Let 
any one turn to the office for consecrating a 
bishop in the Roman Church, and compare it 
with the same office in the Prayer Book, and the 
depth and extent of the revolution accomplished 
will be manifest. In the Roman ordinal, out of 
'seventeen interrogations put to the bishop-elect, 
nine are concerned with his faith on individual 
points of belief. It is not enough to ask if he 
accepts the Xicene creed, but each article is re- 
cited, and expanded to cover ancient doctrinal 
controversies, and to each of these the elect 
must answer, "Credo." In the Anglican or- 
dinal all this is omitted, and these interrogatories 
are substituted : — 



RULING PRINCIPLES 



*7 



"Are you persuaded that the Holy Scrip- 
tures contain all doctrine required as neces- 
sary for eternal salvation through faith in 
Jesus Christ ? And are you determined 
out of the same Holy Scriptures to instruct 
the people committed to your charge ; and 
to teach or maintain nothing as necessary 
to eternal salvation, but that which you shall 
be persuaded may be concluded and proved 
by the same ? 

"Will you then faithfully exercise yourself 
in the Holy Scriptures and call upon God 
by prayer for the true understanding of the 
same ; so that you may be able by them to 
teach and exhort with wholesome doctrine 
and to withstand and convince the gain- 
sayers ? 

"Are you ready with all faithful diligence, 
to banish and drive away from the Church 
all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary 
to God's W ord ; and both privately and 
openly to call upon and encourage others 
to the same ?" 

Even more illuminating is the contrast between 
the "Ordering of Priests/' in the Anglican 
Church, and the "Ordaining of a Presbyter" 
(De Ordinatione Presbyterii), in the Roman 



18 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



Church. In the latter, the candidates for ordi- 
nation standing before the altar make the pro- 
fession of their faith by reciting the Apostles' 
Creed. It is not expected of them that they be 
familiar with the intricacies of doctrine or the 
history of heresies. That is reserved for the 
bishop alone. No promise is exacted of them 
that they shall study Holy Scripture or recognize 
their responsibility to defend the faith. 

In the Anglican office the candidate recites 
no creed, as a profession of the faith he is to 
preach. The vows he takes are modelled after 
those in the office for consecrating a bishop, and 
they give the supreme place, not to creeds or 
doctrines, but to Holy Scripture. 

"Are you persuaded that the Holy Scrip- 
tures contain all doctrine required as neces- 
sary for eternal salvation through faith in 
Jesus Christ ? And are you determined 
out of the said Scriptures to instruct the 
people committed to your charge; and to 
teach nothing as essential to salvation, but 
that which you shall be persuaded may be 
concluded and proved by the Scripture ? 

"Will you then give your faithful diligence 
always so to minister the Doctrine and 
Sacraments, and the Discipline of Christ, 



RULING PRINCIPLES 



19 



as the Lord hath commanded, and as this 
Church hath received the same according 
to the commandments of God ? 

"Will you be ready with all faithful dili- 
gence to banish and drive away from the 
Church all erroneous and strange doctrines 
contrary to God's W ord? 

"Will you be diligent in prayers and in 
reading the Holy Scriptures and in such 
studies as help to the knowledge of the 
same ?" 

In these two offices, the "Consecration of 
Bishops " and the " Ordering of Priests/' we have 
the emancipation of the bishop and the presbyter 
from ancient or mediaeval Catholicism. The 
bishop is set free from the domination of the 
papacy, to which for hundreds of years a vow of 
subjection had been taken; and the original 
equality of the episcopate is restored. In the 
case of the presbyter, a great step forward was 
taken when the responsibility was placed upon 
him equally with the bishop to defend the 
faith, as the Lord hath commanded and as this 
Church hath received the same according to 
the commandments of God. This was the 
presbyter's emancipation from an ignorance and 
irresponsibility which had weakened and dis- 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



credited the Church before the Reformation; 
and Holy Scripture was to be the agency which 
should bring the freedom. 

Nowhere in the formularies of the Anglican 
Church is it creeds on which the stress is laid, 
but rather the Scriptures, as the word of God 
containing all things necessary to salvation. On 
this point the Reformers had learned a lesson 
from the formularies in the reign of Henry VIII, 
where it was shown what an agent for the tyran- 
nical suppression of thought and freedom of 
inquiry, a creed, even the Apostles' Creed, might 
be. For a man also might recite creeds and 
dogmas, and be most loyal in defending without 
understanding them; but when Holy Scripture 
became the test and standard, it must needs be 
carefully and closely and continuously studied 
in order to its interpretation, and "sound learn- 
ing" became essential. 

This change in the position of the presbyter 
of the Anglican Church as compared with the 
Roman priesthood or the Greek, has been com- 
mented on by Dr. Hampden, late bishop of 
Hereford, and the comment is important and 
deserves to be cited: — 

"Among other solemn pledges which 
they [the clergy] are required to give at their 



RULING PRINCIPLES 



21 



ordination to the Priesthood, is that very 
remarkable one, that they will ' banish and 
drive away all erroneous and strange doc- 
trine contrary to God's word/ ... I call 
this a very remarkable injunction of the 
service for the ordination of Priests ; because 
in no other Church is the like commission 
given to any but to the highest order of the 
Ministry, the bishops of the Church, ex- 
clusively. Neither in the Greek forms of 
ordination, nor in the Roman Pontifical, do 
we find any such charge given to the Minis- 
ters of the inferior orders, but only to the 
bishops. All that is exacted of the priest 
and deacon, according to the formularies of 
the Greek and Roman Churches, is the prom- 
ise of obedience to the bishop. ... At the 
Reformation, accordingly, a great change 
was introduced in this respect. . . . Under 
the previous system the mass of the clergy 
were incapable of instructing the people. 
... It was rare to find any who could 
preach to the people. . . . The Reforma- 
tion corrected this evil." 

The Church of England is preeminently a 
layman's church, more so than any other church 
in Christendom. If bishops and clergy were 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



emancipated and set free from what had become 
the bondage of Rome, still greater was the 
emancipation secured to the laity. In the 
ancient Church and in the mediaeval they had 
no part in the government of the Church or in 
the determination of its formularies. It was a 
common mode of speech to designate the clergy 
as spirituals, the laity as carnales. All this 
was changed at the Reformation. It was the 
laity who took the first steps toward separating 
the English Church from the authority of Rome, 
and who finally completed the process. It was by 
the laity that the Prayer Book was approved and 
its use made binding. The prominence of the 
laity in all the changes wrought at the Reforma- 
tion gives a distinctive character to the Anglican 
Church as compared with the other reformed 
churches. 

But in no respect was the revolution made 
so manifest as in the one supreme act by which 
the Book of Common Prayer was put into the 
hands of the people, as the laymen's book no 
less than that of the clergy. Hitherto such a 
thing was unknown. Primers were sometimes 
issued for the instruction of the laity, but at the 
Reformation, all the offices of the Church, ren- 
dered into English, were placed in their hands. 
What had hitherto been the priests' book was 



RULING PRINCIPLES 



henceforth to be the possession of all, men, 
women, and children alike. In the unreformed 
offices, the clergy responded to the clergy, and 
to say "Amen" was the only participation of the 
people. In the Prayer Book the people respond 
to the clergy on equal terms. The clergy appear 
acting as the people's representative. 

There is a profound spiritual principle in- 
volved in this far-reaching change. It is some- 
times said by those who are ignorant of the 
Anglican Church, that in the Reformation she 
put forth no distinctive doctrine. The Zwinglian 
Church magnified the glory and majesty of God ; 
the Lutheran Church set forth as its controlling 
principle, the truth of "justification by faith"; 
the Reformed Church built upon the Divine will 
as expressed in decrees of predestination. But 
a great act characterizes the Anglican Church — 
the making of a book whose possession by the 
people becomes a means of education, of en- 
lightenment, and of Christian nurture. And be- 
neath this act lies a doctrine or truth, which 
involves what is essential in the teaching of 
Christ — the priesthood of all Christians ', who 
now offer spiritual sacrifices to God, of them- 
selves, and not through another. In the light 
of this truth, the agency of the clergy is subordi- 
nate. In the mutual response of people and 



24 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 

clergy lies the visible and outward sign of 
Anglican worship, as contrasted with Greek or 
Roman or Puritan worship, where the isolated 
officiant at the altar or in the pulpit alone is 
speaking and the people are silent. 

It is another distinguishing mark of the 
Reformation in the Church of England, that it 
was not overcome by a reactionary tendency, 
as was the case in the Reformed Church, and 
to a certain extent also in the Lutheran Church. 
The Anglican Church retained what Christian 
piety had accumulated during the Christian ages 
in the line of devotion and in the Christian or- 
dering of time, or in the aesthetic and impres- 
sive arrangement of its worship. But there was 
a cleansing and a purification; whatever was 
contrary to the Word of God was rejected; 
whatever harmonized with it was retained. 
The Prayer Book was not an accidental or 
fortuitous production, but the work of one who 
devoted many years to liturgical study, and who 
by practical experience knew the impressive 
points in breviary or missal, and felt the im- 
pressive features which carried a religious and 
Christian appeal. The Prayer Book became 
through Cranmer's influence a constructive work 
of literary skill and of artistic merit as well as 



RULING PRINCIPLES 



25 



a summary of religious devotion. It was done 
also at the right moment in history, a moment 
which unavailed of would have been lost forever. 
The juncture of the new and the old constituted 
a plastic creative hour; and the man met the 
hour, who was devoted to the Christian faith as 
revealed in Scripture, but who without prejudice 
or reactionary tendency was able and glad to 
discern in the religious consciousness of the past 
whatever bound it to the present or to the future. 
No great and pure religious instinct was over- 
looked. Indeed there was some concession to 
the weakness of those with whom past associa- 
tions were too sacred to be sundered sharply or 
rudely. 

Thus in the stately offices of Morning and 
Evening Prayer, constituting the staple and 
normal worship of the people, it is the for- 
giveness of God which is offered; and in the 
Reformation, it was God's forgiveness, and not 
that of the Church or of the priesthood, which 
was most desired and needed, and most highly 
valued. But for those with whom the conscious- 
ness of God was weak or who shrank from the 
Divine approach, those who were sick or at the 
point of death, the forgiveness of man was al- 
lowed, as in the phrase of the form of absolution 
of the thirteenth century, — ego te absolve*. It 



26 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



is something to be valued — the forgiveness of 
man as representing the Church ; but there is a 
higher forgiveness for which the soul hungers in 
its highest mood, which no lower forgiveness 
will satisfy. But this is one of the few conces- 
sions to the religious mood bred by medievalism. 
For the predominant note in the Prayer Book is 
God, revealed in the sacred and eternal Trinity, 
— the divine love and the divine forgiveness; 
and the response of man implies the cultrvation 
of moral character, as what God desires. It 
is this which lends dignity and weight to the 
exhortations distributed throughout the book. 

Another feature giving high distinction and 
value to the Prayer Book is its conservative 
tone, which becomes a strong apologetic for 
the Christian faith. To discard the devotions 
of past ages, in the effort at reform, would have 
implied that the work of Christ had been in 
great part a failure, that the Church preserved 
no continuous faith or life. Such a temptation, 
and it existed, Cranmer rose above — even if 
circumstances had not favored his purpose. He 
could believe that the churches of Jerusalem, 
Antioch, and Alexandria had erred in matters of 
the faith, that the Church of Rome had griev- 
ously erred ; but he also believed that they had 
conserved the Christian faith to a saving extent, 



RULING PRINCIPLES 



27 



and that they remained true churches, despite 
their errors. He could hold that General Coun- 
cils had erred in matters of faith, and yet retain 
for them high reverence as having set forth and 
maintained the fundamental truth of the co- 
equality of the Son with the Father. 

In the age of the Reformation the Bible was 
distinguished from other books, as the Word of 
God. It was the Word of God, when compared 
with ecclesiastical traditions which were the 
commandments of men; the Word of God as 
revealing the Divine will, and because the scope 
of the whole is to give all glory to God; the 
Word of God, because it contained all things 
necessary to salvation; the Word of God, pre- 
eminently, for it carried the portrait of Christ, 
the life and character and teaching of Him who 
is the Word of God made flesh and dwelling 
among men. Further than this the Anglican 
Church did not go. It makes no answer to the 
questions, How or Why. It offers no theory of 
inspiration, no dogma as to mode of composition 
of the various books, their date, or their author- 
ship. It is content to trust the Scriptures to the 
clergy and laity for their devout study, throwing 
on them the individual responsibility for the 
interpretation of its contents, by the aid of sound 



28 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



learning, and by the use of such helps as minister 
to the knowledge of the same. In its conception 
of the Bible the Anglican Church differs from 
the unreformed churches, Greek and Roman, in 
not placing tradition or the creeds above the 
Bible, or in valuing the Bible chiefly as the bul- 
wark of the creeds, in accordance with which its 
interpretation must be confined. Hence there 
is no sensitiveness, no fear about the Bible, as 
with those who subordinate it to the creeds. 
The Anglican Church has made no effort to 
guard the Bible by theory, definition, or dogma. 
Not even its infallibility is asserted. It is 
Romanism or Puritanism which asserts the 
inspiration of all and every part of Scripture. 1 
Theories about the Bible devised in the seven- 
teenth century, and chiefly by divines of the 
Puritan school or by Lutheran theologians, are 
very often attributed to the Anglican Church, and 
fastened upon her, by a preponderating senti- 
ment from without her pale, which it is some- 
times hard to resist. But the most careful 
search of Anglican standards reveals no trace of 
them. It must be remembered in this connec- 
tion, that in the age of the Reformation, while 
the Bible was held in love and reverence, yet 

1 Cf. "Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent," Session IV, 
"Westminster Confession," Ch. I. 



RULING PRINCIPLES 



29 



there was also greater freedom in its interpreta- 
tion than in the age which followed. Luther's 
Biblical criticism to a later age would appear like 
the destructive attack of modern rationalism. 
He thought it a matter of indifference whether or 
not Moses wrote the Pentateuch. He compared 
the books of Scripture with each other and 
assigned them a relative importance according 
to their subject-matter or their mode of treat- 
ment. To the Gospel of St. John he gave the 
preference above the Synoptics, and thought the 
Epistles of St. Paul of greater authority than 
the gospels of St. Matthew, St. Mark, or St. 
Luke. If one had St. John's Gospel and St. 
Paul's Epistles, he had all that it was necessary 
to know. He found no inspiration in the Epis- 
tles of James or Jude, or in the Book of Revela- 
tion. The test with Luther was the appreciation 
of the Person and work of Christ. Our view 
has changed about the relative value of the 
books of Scripture ; but what it is important to 
recognize here, is that opinions, such as those of 
Luther, were well known in England at the time 
when our formularies were issued, and may be 
responsible for the somewhat cautious and 
moderate language used in defining Scripture, 
as the "Word of God, containing all things 
necessary to salvation." Cranmer, who is re- 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



sponsible for the phrase, was familiar with the 
new learning of his time ; he was a scholar also, 
and had the moderation of one who looked at 
a subject in its different aspects. To his mind 
the unity of Scripture lay in the presentation of 
Christ, by anticipation in the Old Testament 
and by its fulfilment in the New. "Both in the 
old and New Testament everlasting life is offered 
to mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator 
between God and man, being both God and 
Man" (Article VII). 

On this point, Dr. Creighton, the late bishop 
of London, has remarked: — 

"The Church of England stands in a 
remarkably free attitude toward the prog- 
ress of human learning. It has nothing to 
conceal and shrinks from no inquiry. No 
religious organization attaches a higher 
importance to Holy Scripture or venerates 
more highly its authority; but it has never 
committed itself to any theory concerning 
the mode in which Scripture was written 
or the weight to be attached to it for any 
other purpose than that of ascertaining all 
that is necessary to salvation. That the 
Scriptures contain God's revelation to man, 
there must be no doubt; but the Church 



RULING PRINCIPLES 



3 1 



of England has never erected any artificial 
barrier against inquiry into the mode in 
which that revelation was made, into the 
method and degree in which God's spirit 
made use of human instruments, into the way 
in which national records were penetrated 
with a sense of the divine purpose. It is true 
that assumptions have been made on these 
points and others. Men have always asked 
questions and have given themselves answers 
to the best of their capacity. Such answers 
are of the nature of hypotheses, founded on 
the best knowledge available, but capable of 
extension or alteration as knowledge ad- 
vances." 1 

The fear and the disquiet caused by Biblical 
criticism are overcome when we concentrate 
attention on the essence of the Christian faith as 
consisting in the Person of the Christ, who is the 
"Way, the Truth, and the Life." The Bible is 
the divinely ordered record of that Person. We 
read the Bible that it may show us Christ, and 
that by prayer and study and meditation Christ 
may grow in our hearts by faith. 

1 "The Church and the Nation/' pp. 78, 79. 



CHAPTER II 



HISTORICAL VARIATIONS IN THE INTERPRETATION 

OF THE CREED 

I 

i. The creed commonly called the Apostles' 
Creed took its origin in Rome about the middle 
of the second century, and may in a general way 
be regarded as a summary of those convictions 
regarding the Christian faith in the strength of 
which the rising Catholic Church overcame the 
heathenism of the Roman Empire in the West. 
Viewed from this point, it is seen to include two 
unique statements which never gained formal 
entrance into Eastern creeds, but were for the 
Western Church embodiments of profound and 
influential conviction. These two statements, 
so difficult for the modern mind to receive, but 
of the highest significance in the ancient Church, 
are the ''descent into hell " (descendit ad inferos), 
and the "resurrection of the body" {resurrec- 
tionem carnis)} In their origin and in their 

1 The translation, "the resurrection of the body" is found in 
the "Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian Man," 

32 



HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 



development, they were the expression of vital 
belief in the ancient and the early mediaeval 
Church. Long before its insertion in the creed, 
the "descent into hell " was associated with the 
conviction that Christ had not only been actually 
born into this lower world and had actually died 
on the cross, and had made this world His own ; 
but that He also had ranged through the universe, 
as the victorious, unconquerable Son of God, 
who, in the power of immortal youth, had visited 
every place where human souls were to be 
found, even hades and hell ; that He had met the 
evil spirit, the enemy of man, and had routed 
him from his stronghold. Then, when the under 
world had yielded up its contents to Him, 
began the upward movement. Henceforth souls 
ascended instead of going down into the lower 
parts of the world. Heaven was revealed, — an 
unknown sphere to the ancient world. So, hav- 
ing accomplished His work in the under world 
and routed the prince of darkness, He rose up 
again from the dead and ascended into heaven, 
and He sitteth henceforth on the right hand of 
the Father, which implies the attitude of assured 
success, that evil had been conquered in its 
strongholds. But it also means more, — that at 

put forth by the king's authority in 1543. But the original pur- 
port of the article was to lay emphasis on the flesh, 

D 



I 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



the right hand of the Father, He is also in the 
thick of the strife, ever ready to come to the aid 
of His Church; or, as St. Stephen, before he fell 
asleep, beheld Him, not sitting, but standing, 
as if the assault moved Him to rise in behalf of 
His devoted follower. 

Whatever may be one's difficulty in believing 
in the descent into hell, the Church will not 
willingly yield this picture of the immortal, con- 
quering Christ. If the dread of the evil spirit 
in the universe has been exorcised, it is owing 
to this ancient belief, or rather it is owing to the 
influence of Christ Himself, as His followers saw 
Him, when they no longer knew 7 Him only after 
the flesh, but in His transfigured career through- 
out the universe of God. Nor does it weaken 
the beauty or truth of the picture when we recall 
how the old Roman world, from the second to 
the fourth century, was invaded by Mithra, to 
whom a similar role was assigned in the heathen 
imagination. Light has been shed on the re- 
ligious ferment of that age, by researches of 
modern scholars. 1 Mithra is now recognized 
as having been a competitor for the suffrage 
of the Roman emperors. He appeared as an 
immortal youth, endowed with great beauty. 



1 Cf. Cumont, " The Mystery of Mithra. 99 



HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 



He, too, had a miraculous entrance into the 
world, being born out of a rock. He ranged the 
universe as the champion and protector of souls, 
he was victorious over evil, he was related to the 
Sun, with whom he sat down at a banquet. 
His religion was popular in the army, and it is 
now known that his worship was practised in 
every, even remotest, part of the Western Empire. 
One advantage he had over the Christian faith, 
that he posed as the special friend of the empire 
and of Roman emperors and of the army, — 
the patron of the established order, who gave 
victory to the Roman legions. Here was his 
strength and here was also his weakness. When 
the Roman army met with successive defeats, 
his hold began to weaken, and after the time of 
Julian! the Apostate (361-363) it began to dis- 
appear before the conquering Church. But what 
hurt the worship of Mithra most was the deep 
conviction of the reality of the birth and passion 
of Christ as enshrined in the Apostles' Creed. 
For Mithra never existed, and Christ had really 
been born and had really suffered and really 
died. It is of scenes like this that we are re- 
minded as we recall the struggles of our brethren 
in the ancient church, resisting unreality and 
building on the solid foundation of historic 
fact. 



36 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



In regard to the "resurrection of the flesh/ 5 
that also takes us into the heart of that distant 
age, which found comfort and support in the 
Apostles' Creed. The belief was invading the 
West, coming from Oriental religion, that a 
sharp distinction existed and separated between 
soul and body, that the connection with the flesh 
stained the spirit and weakened its power, and 
that any redemption must be from the power of 
the flesh, in order to gain immortality. Such a 
conviction conditions the conception of the 
under-world, as in Homer and Virgil, where 
spirits wander aimlessly and sad, suffering from 
the disembodiment of death. The doctrine of 
the resurrection of the flesh was therefore a 
profound protest against the dreary view of 
Orientalism, — it meant life and hope in this 
world and in the other. 1 In it we may see 
the prophecy of modern science, attaching 
importance to the human body, whose re- 
sults are more and more apparent in the 
physician's art; the basis, too, of modern 
painting, as it revived in the age of the Renais- 
sance, and attached itself to what was posi- 
tive in the early art of the Greeks. When 

1 How much the resurrection of the flesh implied to the old 
Roman world, may be seen in Tertullian's treatise, De Resur- 
rectione Carnis. 



HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 



37 



we recall that, in the places where Oriental 
religion or Mohammedanism has prevailed, 
there has been no scientific study of the human 
body and that the healing art is still in its 
rudiments; or that the plastic art of painting 
has received no development, nor added to the 
pleasure and the enlightenment, to the beauty 
and dignity, of human life, as in Western 
Europe, we may be grateful for the clause in 
the Apostles' Creed, — the resurrection of the 
flesh. But this conviction has not been with- 
out solace to the religious heart. The in- 
sistence on the body of Christ with which He 
ascended into heaven, the insistence on the 
resurrection of the human body, tended to 
disarm death of its terrors. It was a response 
to an universal human instinct. 

There are other features of the Apostles' Creed 
which, while they still retain their appeal to the 
Christian mind and conscience, made that appeal 
with intenser force, in a more realistic way, in the 
ancient church. Such was the conviction of 
the indispensable importance of the new society, 
which was taking the place of the old — the 
organization of the Church elaborated and per- 
fected with surpassing skill and diligence. Into 
this new society each man was to be born by 
baptism, and baptism stood for an inward 



38 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



purification. The kingdom of this world was 
passing over into the Kingdom of God, — so it 
began to be interpreted from an early time. 
Nor did the great structure of the mediaeval 
Church in the West or the various Christian 
nations of the East ever lose this consciousness 
of a divine origin within the Church, however 
stagnant or debased they may appear in later 
ages. From the second century, the " Catholic 
Church" as the new society founded by Christ 
and intended to embrace the world was the most 
inspiring of convictions. 

The " forgiveness of sins " has a deep sig- 
nificance when we recall the limitation placed 
upon its scope by movements such as Monta- 
nism, in the second century; but also a deeper 
significance when we place it over against the 
teaching of Gnostic sects, where forgiveness was 
unknown, where souls were what they were 
and must ever so remain in consequence of a fixed 
evolution or emanation in the physical order. 
Such was the central principle of Gnosticism, 
working in disguised and subtle ways, which, 
if it had not been excluded from the Western 
world, would have made progress and hope 
for mankind impossible. The doctrine of for- 
giveness strikes its roots into the civil order, 
reconciles man to life, gives courage and hope, 



I < J 

I 

HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 39 

and constitutes the foundation of Christian 
civilization. 

All these things were but the expansion of the 
Divine Name, or of the baptismal formula, — 
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ; they 
were implications wrapped up in the new name 
of God. They might all be dropped or omitted, 
but the Name would abide, and continue to 
generate the forces of the spiritual life. Nor 
was this origin of the Creed forgotten. Ever and 
anon, in the Middle Ages, it is set forth as the 
essence of the Creed — a protest, it is possible, 
against the dogmatic tendency, which in ad- 
vocating too exclusively this or that feature of 
the Creed failed to do justice to its larger 
character and purpose. The Fatherhood of 
God, the redemption of the world by Christ, the 
higher life of the soul begotten by the Spirit, 
these threefold agencies, eternal distinctions in 
the Divine being and operating in time, were 
the essence of the Christian revelation. God 
the Holy Ghost drawing all men into the fellow- 
ship of the Eternal Father and the Eternal Son — 
such was the Christian motive, which was to 
remake this lower world, and to bring it into 
harmony with the upper world, so that through- 
out the universe there should be unity of motive 
and unity of result ; and the earth should aspire 



40 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



to attain the fellowship and communion which 
constitutes the glory of heaven. 

For such reasons as these the old Roman or 
Apostles' Creed has won the confidence and the 
loyalty of the Christian Church. It may be that 
taken in its original purport it cannot hold quite 
the place it did in the ancient church. The 
world has been revolutionized, new issues have 
arisen, the outlook upon life has changed. The 
new learning, the modern sciences, have modi- 
fied our beliefs. But taking it as a whole and 
with a large construction, no ancient document 
retains such a living character and even adapta- 
bility to the needs of modern life. And as the 
symbol, whose summary of contents represents 
the process by which the Christian Church won 
its stupendous victory over ancient heathenism, 
it has an historic interest unsurpassed except by 
the annals of the life of Christ. 

It is when we turn from a large constructive 
estimate of the Creed to the historical interpre- 
tation of its separate clauses, that we become 
aware of many divergencies of interpretation 
affecting almost every statement it contains. 
They are not evasions of its meaning nor efforts 
to empty its clauses of their significance. They 
are historical monuments of different ways of 
regarding the Christian revelation. They go 



HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 



back to the remote Christian ages. They are 
not devices of modern scepticism to get rid of 
difficulties ; nor are they efforts to vaporize doc- 
trines by construction, in order to their denial 
under the guise of interpretation. The Greek 
and Latin churches differed from the first in 
their apprehension of the Christian faith, and di- 
vergencies appear in their respective commenta- 
ries on the Creeds. But the Anglican Church has 
no authoritative commentary, fixing the meaning 
of each and every clause beyond the possibility 
of dispute. Hence, there have arisen various 
modern interpretations of credal statements, 
which have been legitimated within the Church 
by the comprehensiveness which is a mark of the 
Church of England, as compared with the an- 
cient historic churches, or with the Reformed 
churches, so far as they still hold by the West- 
minster or other standards. These variations 
give the Anglican Church its adaptedness to the 
varying currents of the national life in succes- 
sive generations, in contrast with the stagnation 
of the ancient churches, which have endeavored 
to stereotype the one aspect under which alone 
the Christian faith appears to them. 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



II 

The Apostles' Creed has been subject to di- 
verse interpretations. It is not the question, 
whether it should be so; the simple fact con- 
fronts us. The clauses of the Creed have been 
expanded, or, to use another expression, they 
have been " stretched " to include modern re- 
ligious thought and even divergent attitudes of 
opinion. 

In the age of the Renaissance, the Creed 
suffered a severe shock when it was shown 
by Laurentius Valla that it was not originally 
composed by the twelve apostles. A tradition 
was thus rudely dispelled which had come 
down from time immemorial, clothing this 
venerable symbol with a sanctity to which 
creeds with oecumenical authority could not 
aspire. 

The Anglican Church in the age of the Refor- 
mation laid down the ruling principle for its 
interpretation; but in so doing departed widely 
from another method of interpretation which 
had long prevailed. A new religious motive 
born at the Reformation inspired the authors 
of the Church Catechism as they asked and 
answered the Question : — 



HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 



"What dost thou chiefly learn in these 
articles of thy belief? 
f "Answer: First, I learn to believe in 
God the Father, who hath made me and all 
the world. 

"Secondly, in God the Son, who hath re- 
deemed me and all mankind. 

"Thirdly, in God the Holy Ghost, who 
sanctifieth me and all people of God." 

There is here a distinction between the articles 
of the Creed: some are primary and essential, 
others are subordinate in importance. It was 
the mission of the Reformers to give prominence 
to the being of God and His activity in the 
world of human affairs. Inspired by this con- 
viction they gained the courage to resist the evils 
bred in the unreformed church which preceded 
them, where the devotion to the Virgin Mary and 
the saints had thrown God and Christ and the 
Holy Spirit into the background of the human 
consciousness. Any one familiar with the litera- 
ture of the sixteenth century knows how the age 
rejoiced in the sense of the Divine Presence in all 
life and especially in contemporaneous events, — 
in the coming back, as it were, of God to His 
church and to His world. 

In one of the formularies of the English 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



Church, set forth before the religious reconstruc- 
tion (1543), known as "The King's Book" or 
"The Erudition of a Christian Man/' is found 
a similar statement to that in the later Catechism. 
It is attached to a comment on the first article 
of the Creed, — "I believe in God, the Father 
Almighty, maker of heaven and earth," and the 
comment reads: "This manner of belief we 
ought to have in no creature of God, be it never 
so excellent, but in God only; and therefore 
in this Creed, the said manner of speaking is 
used only in the three articles which concern 
the three persons in Trinity, that is, the Father, 
the Son, and the Holy Ghost." 1 The passage 
is plainly an attempt to inject into a document, 
otherwise mediaeval and even reactionary, the 
spirit of the coming reform. 

For this distinction between the articles of 
the Creed there was a precedent in an ancient 
commentary on the Creed by Rufinus in the 
fourth century. 

"We say that we believe 6 in God the 
Father/ so also we say 'in Christ/ so also 
( in the Holy Ghost/ ... It is not said ( in 



1 "A Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian Man," 
p. 229, in " Formularies " of Faith put forth by authority during the 
reign of Henry VIII, Oxford, 1856. 



HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 45 



the Holy Church/ nor 'in the forgiveness 
of sins/ nor 'in the resurrection of the 
flesh/ For if the preposition 'in' had 
been added, it would have had the same 
force as in the preceding articles. But now 
in those clauses in which the faith concern- 
ing the Godhead is declared, we say 6 in 
God the Father/ and 'in Jesus Christ, 
His Son/ and 'in the Holy Ghost/ But 
in the rest where we speak not of the God- 
head, but of creatures and mysteries, the 
preposition 6 in is not added. We do not 
say 'we believe in the Holy Church/ but we 
believe the Holy Church not as God but as 
the Church gathered together to God ; and 
'we believe that there is forgiveness of sins/ 
and 'we believe that there will be a resur- 
rection of the flesh/ By this monosyllabic 
preposition, therefore, the Creator is distin- 
guished from the creatures, and things divine 
are separated from things human/' 1 

In the Nicene Creed this important distinction 
has been in some details of the Creed preserved. 
Thus, — 



1 "Expos. Sym. Apost.," 36. 



46 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 

"I beli eve in the Holy Ghost . . . and I 
beli eve one Catholic and Apostolic Church, 
I acknowledge one baptism, . . . and I 
look for the resurrection of the dead." 1 

The Apostles' Creed, as has already been 
said, was in its origin an expansion of the for- 
mula of baptism, — "the name of the Father, 
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." And 
this distinction between what was given by di- 
vine revelation and the comment added by the 
Church has never wholly disappeared from the 
liturgical or other offices. During the Middle 
Ages, in the Western Church, the distinction is 
preserved between the catechetical and the 
baptismal Creed : and the latter was short and 
did not go much beyond the Divine Name. 2 
In the present Roman office for Baptism is found 
the same distinction. At the opening of the 
office the full Apostles' Creed is recited litur- 
gically, but when it comes to Baptism the shorter 
creed is adopted, which runs as follows in inter- 
rogatory manner : — 

1 In a translation of the Creed made by Cranmer, with great 
care, is the reading: "I believe in the Holy Ghost; and that there 
is an Holy Catholic Church; . . . and that there shall be resur- 
rection of the body." 

2 Cf. Swainson, "The Creeds of the Church, ,, 179 ff., for the 
prevalence of other and shorter creeds and their use at baptism. 



HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 



"Credis in Deum, patrem omnipotentem, 
creatorem coeli et terrae ? 

"Credis in Jesum Christum, Filium ejus 
unicum, Dominum nostrum, natum et pas- 
sum ? 

"Credis et in Spiritum Sanctum, sanctam 
ecclesiam Catholicam, Sanctorum com- 
munionem, remissionem peccatorum, carnis 
resurrectionem, et vitam aeternam?" 

"It would appear," says Swainson, "that, 
before the Reformation, the Apostles' Creed, as 
we have it now, was never used at baptism, 
either as a declaratory, or as an interrogatory 
Creed." The baptismal creed or confession in 
the time of Cyprian (f 258) read as follows : 
"Dost thou believe in God the Father, in (His) 
Son Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit ? Dost 
thou believe in remission of sins and eternal life 
through the Church?" The Catholic Church 
could not depart so widely, as in the Roman 
Creed, from the simple confessions in the Apos- 
tolic Age, without an echo down through the 
centuries reminding of the earlier simplicity of 
the Christian faith. Thus in the fourth century, 
in the book "De Sacramentis," ascribed to St. 
Ambrose: "Thou wast asked, Dost thou believe 
in God the Father Almighty ? Thou didst an- 



48 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



swer, I believe; and thou wast baptized, i.e. 
thou wast buried. Again thou wast asked, Dost 
thou believe also in our Lord Jesus Christ and 
in His cross ? Thou saidst, I believe ; and thou 
wast baptized, i.e. together with Christ thou 
wast buried. Again thou wast asked, Dost 
thou believe also in the Holy Ghost ? Thou 
saidst, I believe ; and a third time thou wast im- 
mersed, that the triple confession should re- 
move the multiplied lapse of thy earlier life." 
In the Middle Ages the same echo was heard, as 
in the reference by Facundus of Hermiane 
(c. 550) to this short form of baptismal pro- 
fession: — "they believe in God the Father 
Almighty, and in Jesus Christ His Son, and in 
the Holy Spirit." 1 

The Anglican Church has only made the 

1 Cf. Swainson, "The Nicene and Apostles' Creeds," pp. 20, 
22, 24. Swainson has given several specimens of these shorter 
creeds, used at baptism, down to the ninth century. Thus in the 
Gelasian Sacramentary used by Thomasius, belonging apparently 
to the eighth century, the baptismal creed ran as follows: "Dost 
thou believe in God the Father Almighty ? I believe. Dost thou 
believe also in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord, born and 
suffered ? I believe. And dost thou believe in the Holy Ghost, 
the Holy Church, Remission of Sins, the Resurrection of the Flesh ? 
I believe. " In this creed are omitted the words "Creator of 
heaven and earth," "conceived by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin 
Mary," "under Pontius Pilate," and so to the end of the part 
relating to our Lord, were omitted and so were the clauses or words 
"Catholic," "the Communion of Saints, Life everlasting." 



HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 49 

ancient distinction more emphatic by requiring 
every child to learn that what the Creed teaches 
chiefly is the Divine Name, — the Father who 
creates, the Son who redeems, and the Holy 
Ghost who sanctifies. Whenever the Creed is 
recited, this reduction to its essential purpose 
is to be borne in mind. 

In the seventeenth century, which may be 
called the age of Protestant Scholasticism, 
following so closely the greater age of creative 
activity and reconstruction, we meet an exag- 
gerated intellectualism, which may be seen not 
only in the famous Westminster Confession, 
but infected almost every important theological 
writer, whether in England or on the Continent. 
Under the spell of this over intellectualism, the 
important distinction made by the Prayer Book 
was overlooked as if it did not exist or were no 
longer tenable. Thus Bishop Pearson (f 1686) 
in opening his "Exposition of the Creed" re- 
marks : — 

"As the first word Credo, I believe, giveth 
a denomination to the whole Confession of 
Faith, from thence commonly called the 
Creed, so is the same word to be imagined 
not to stand only where it is expressed but 
to be carried through the whole body of the 

E 



50 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



Confession. For although it be but twice 
actually rehearsed yet we must conceive it 
virtually prefixed to the head of every 
article/' 

Bishop Pearson was not unaware that in the 
ancient church a distinction had been made 
between the articles of the Creed, but he does 
seem oblivious to the fact that the same dis- 
tinction had been made in the Church Cate- 
chism. He refers to St. Augustine who had 
taught that to believe in God, meant not only 
assent to the truth of His existence but implied 
a religious act, an act of faith, love, and 
obedience. Thomas Aquinas had also made 
the same distinction, as had Peter the Lombard 
before him. But Bishop Pearson takes issue 
with them all, finding his support in texts of 
Scripture, for the conclusion that the distinction 
between believe in and believe (credere Deum, 
and credere in Deum) has no validity. There 
is no difference between faith and assent. 
" Faith is a habit of the intellectual part of 
man." 

"To believe, therefore, as the word 
stands in the front of the Creed, and not only 
so but is diffused through every article and 



HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 51 



proposition of it, is to assent to the whole 
and every part of it." 1 

The exaggerated intellectualism or scholastic 
tendency of Bishop Pearson left its impression 
on his age. It was born of the same mood that 
produced Puritan scholasticism, the feeling that 
in systems of theology lay the salvation of the 
Church from unbelief; that the intellect could 
bolster up a creed which without such support 
was in danger of losing its hold on life. But 
the commentary on Protestant scholasticism is 
written in the age that followed, and is most in- 
structive. The unbelief came in like a flood, 
known as Deism, and the spiritual life of the 
Church sank in the eighteenth century to its 
lowest ebb, until Wesley and Whitefield restored 
again the old meaning to the words, I believe. 

The attitude of Pearson would indeed justify 
the striking comparison of the articles of the 
Creed to a group of precious stones, twelve in 
number, no less and no more. But the com- 
parison fails, in one point at least, when we recall 
the fact that the American Episcopal Church 
gave permission in 1789 to any congregation to 
omit from the Creed one of its articles, "He 
descended into hell." The permission was with- 

1 "Exposition of the Creed," p. 19. 



52 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



drawn in 1892. The omission, however, is of 
no special importance, if the significance of the 
creeds, or that which is chiefly to be learned from 
them according to the Anglican formularies, is 
the central fundamental truth — the doctrine 
of the Trinity. All else is subordinate to this 
supreme possession, as the all-inclusive for- 
mula of the Christian faith. To the three eter- 
nal distinctions in the Godhead, the words "I 
believe 33 apply with a meaning and a force, 
which is not carried by the minor clauses. 

So long as the creeds were recited in the offices 
of the unreformed church by the clergy alone, 
whether at the altar in ordination as an ecclesi- 
astical vow, or in the Liturgy, or at the saying 
of the daily office in monasteries, it might have 
been possible by a fixed dogmatic system, such 
as that of the Greek and Roman churches, to 
secure a certain amount of uniformity of inter- 
pretation. When the creeds came to be recited 
by the whole congregation in every act of public 
worship, as in the Anglican Church, with no 
commentary authorized by the Church to fix 
their meaning, to secure even this degree of 
uniformity was impossible. The history of the 
creeds reveals divergence of opinion on almost 
every article or phrase. It would require a 
treatise of no small dimensions to do justice to 



HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 



the extent and significance of these variations. 
The discussion of them here must be brief and 
condensed. 

The variations confront us at the very opening 
words. 

GOD THE FATHER ALMIGHTY, MAKER OF 
HEAVEN AND EARTH 

If there were any one point on which the mind 
of the ancient church was agreed, it was that 
God made the world, in opposition to heathen 
theories of emanation or evolution. But evo- 
lution has worked its way into the modern mind 
in contrast to the creation by the fiat of the divine 
will, if not in conflict with it. The word " made," 
or created, has been stretched to take in the 
modern conception, which changes the ancient 
meaning. 

CONCEIVED BY THE HOLY GHOST 

In regard to the mode of the Incarnation the 
language of ancient fathers shows diversity. 
This phrase was not originally in the Roman 
Creed, but may have been introduced by the end 
of the second century. It did not find its way 
into the Eastern creeds until after the middle of 
the fourth century, and its absence from the 



/ 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



original Nicene Creed should be noted. In his 
treatise on the Incarnation, Athanasius does not 
employ it, but attributes the divine activity to 
the Logos, the second person in the Trinity, who 
"when He was descending to us, fashioned His 
body for himself from a Virgin." * * * "For 
being himself mighty and artificer of everything, 
he (the Logos) prepares the body in the Virgin. 99 
("Delncar.," 8.) 

BORN OF THE VIRGIN MARY 

As this is now among the sensitive spots in the 
Creed, around which controversy and agitation 
have gathered, the discussion of it is postponed 
to a later chapter, in order to a fuller treatment. 
But it may be said in passing, that with some 
the emphasis has been placed on the womanhood 
of Mary, or, in the words of St. Paul, "born of a 
woman, born under the law"; with others on 
her virginity as essential, in the nature of the 
case, to the incarnation. This divergence 
dates back to the second century. 

he descended into hell (Descendit ad in- 
ferna or ad inferos) 

This phrase was not introduced into the Roman 
Creed (Apostles') until the middle of the eighth 



HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 



century, but it had gained currency in the 
ancient church from an early period. It was 
in the Creed of Acquileja from the fourth cen- 
tury, and is interpreted by Rufinus as meaning 
a descent into the place of punishment. On this 
point there was no difference of opinion in the 
ancient church — Christ had descended into 
hell, for the purpose of meeting and overcom- 
ing Satan, and also of delivering the souls of 
those who trusted in Him. This was the pre- 
vailing interpretation still in the sixteenth cen- 
tury, both before and after the reign of Henry 
VIII. 

"He descended immediately in his soul 
down into hell . . . and at his said entry 
into hell first he conquered and oppressed 
both the devil and hell and also death 
itself. . . . The devil with all his power, 
craft and subtilty and malice is now sub- 
dued and made captive, not only unto me 
but unto all the other faithful people. 

"He spoiled hell and delivered and 
brought with him from thence all the souls 
of those righteous and good men which from 
the fall of Adam died in the favor of God," 
etc. ("The Institution of a Christian 
Man," 1537, p. 41, Oxford ed., 1856.) 



56 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



In the "Catechism of Faith/' by Thomas 
Becon, who was prebendary of Canterbury and 
chaplain to Archbishop Cranmer, in the reign 
of Edward VI, is a similar statement, given in 
answer to the question, — "What profit have we 
by Christ's descension and going down into 
hell ? " 

"By this means we are well assured that 
Christ hath overcome the devil, broken the 
serpent's head, destroyed the gates of hell, 
vanquished the infernal army, and utterly 
delivered us from everlasting damnation. " 
("Works," Parker Soc. ed., p. 93.) 

To the same conclusion, though with some 
apparent reluctance, came Bishop Pearson, who 
criticises, however, and rejects patristic interpre- 
tation, such as that of St. Jerome, St. Athanasius, 
and others, who taught the triumph of Christ 
over Satan and His spoiling of hell — a teaching, 
in Pearson's view, not confirmed by Scripture. 
But the descent into hell he seems to admit as 
the true interpretation : — 

"He passed to those habitations where 
Satan had taken up his possession and 
exerciseth his dominion. . . . And being 



HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 



he died in the similitude of a sinner, his soul 
went to the place where are the souls of 
men who died for their sins and so did 
wholly undergo the law of death/' ("Ex- 
position of the Creed," Oxford ed., pp. 
449, 450.) 

Pearson broke the long uniform catena of 
opinion in regard to the descent into hell. It 
was no longer part of the triumphal march of 
the victorious Christ in the supernatural sphere, 
which had included the under world, with its 
victory over Satan and hell, as well as the upper 
world of light and glory, and the session at the 
right hand of the Father. The way was thus 
prepared for other modifications of that impos- 
ing process which the original structure of the 
Creed involved; for these later changes, Pear- 
son's innovation was a precedent and justifica- 
tion. When the American Prayer Book was 
put forth in 1789, permission was given to omit 
the words, "He descended into hell," or to sub- 
stitute for them the words, "He went into the 
place of departed spirits." 

"And any churches may omit the words, 
'He descended^into hell/ or may instead of 
them use the words, 'He went into the 



/ 



58 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



place of departed spirits/ which are con- 
sidered as words of the same meaning in the 
Creeds/' (Rubric of American Prayer Book, 

17890 

The popular interpretation now placed on the 
phrase, "He descended into hell/' is that Christ 
went to Paradise, in accordance with His words 
to the thief on the cross, — "This day shalt thou 
be with me in Paradise." 1 

THE THIRD DAY HE ROSE AGAIN FROM THE 

DEAD 

Opinion has been divided in regard to the na- 
ture of the resurrection, as it is approached, on 
the one hand, from the physical point of view; 
according to which matter in its essence is so 
endowed with potency that it may be considered 
capable of spiritual transformation; or, on the 
other hand, from a spiritual point of view, when 
it becomes the adaptation of spirit to the require- 
ments of the material senses of touch and vision. 
Either a material body spiritualized or a spiritual 
body materialized. 

1 Cf. E. H. Plumtre, "The Spirits in Prison and other Studies 
of the Life after Death," for a discussion of this clause, "He de- 
scended into hell." 



HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 



HE ASCENDED INTO HEAVEN 

The literal sense would imply that He went 
upwards before the eyes of His disciples, taking 
with him His body, — flesh and bones. But 
the Copernican theory has made it evident that 
there is no up or down in space. It is only a 
way of speaking. 

Hence the spiritual interpretation that the 
ascension is the final transition from the sphere 
of the visible and tangible into the realm of 
invisible and spiritual activity. 1 

AND SITTETH ON THE RIGHT HAND OF THE 

FATHER 

Again there are two interpretations. If God 
is conceived as outside the world and located 
in space, the session of Christ is construed liter- 
ally as at the right hand of anthropomorphic 
Deity. This view has been amply illustrated in 
ecclesiastical art. 

The spiritual view, which regards Deity as 

1 In the larger Catechism of the Eastern Church this explanation 
of the statement, "He came down from heaven," is offered: "It is 
true that He is everywhere; and so He is always in heaven and 
always on earth; but on earth, he was before invisible; afterwards 
He appeared in the flesh. In this sense it is said that He came 
down from heaven' 9 



6o FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



immanent, implies that the right hand of God 
is a symbol of His omnipresence and omnipo- 
tence, and that Christ is everywhere, in the midst 
of the conflict against evil, and His session at the 
right hand of the Father becomes the symbol of 
victory. 

FROM THENCE HE SHALL COME TO JUDGE THE 
QUICK AND THE DEAD 

Either He shall return in human form at the 
end of the world, when the judgment, conceived 
as a future event, shall begin; or, He comes 
perpetually in every event or movement which 
furthers the growth of His Kingdom, and the 
judgment is continuous and culminating — the 
discrimination between good and evil and the 
condemnation of the evil. (This latter view 
is urged in Robertson's Sermons, in the writings 
of F. D. Maurice, and eloquently presented in 
Mulford's "Republic of God.") 

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 

On this point the Anglican Church has offered 
an interpretation in the "Prayer for all sorts and 
conditions of men/' where "all those who pro- 
fess and call themselves Christians" is given as 



HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 61 



its equivalent. In the American version of this 
prayer " Universal" is substituted for Catholic, 
and this reading may be carried into the Creed — 
"the holy universal Church. " In the Bidding 
Prayer of the Church of England (Canons of 
1604, Canon 55) it reads, "Christ's holy Catholic 
Church, that is, the whole congregation of 
Christian people dispersed throughout the 
world." 

On the other hand, especially since the Ox- 
ford Movement (1833), there has been received 
another interpretation, — the Catholic Church 
exists in three branches, Greek, Roman, and 
Anglican; an interpretation which excludes the 
Lutheran Church and the various branches of 
the Reformed Church; in a word, the Protes- 
tant world is shut out from the Catholic Church 
of the creeds. 1 

1 The Greek Church practically identifies "Catholic " with 
" Orthodox," and gives the preference to Orthodox in its title. 
Among the definitions of " Catholic " the most prominent is in the 
Edict of Theodosius (380 a.d.), where those alone are to enjoy 
the privilege of being known as " Catholic " who accept the Nicene 
Creed. According to Vincentius of Lerins, that is Catholic 
which has been always, everywhere, and by all received : Quod 
semper, quod ubique, et quod ab omnibus. The Roman Church has 
steadfastly maintained that union with the bishop of Rome is 
necessary in order to union with the Catholic Church, or that 
papacy is essential to Catholicity. 



62 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS 

Was not in the original form of the Creed, 
but was added in Southern Gaul in the fifth 
century, and became a part of the Roman 
Creed after its final shape was assumed in 
the eighth century. There has never been 
certainty about the meaning of the phrase. 
It has often been interpreted as in apposition 
to the preceding phrase and as thus defining the 
Catholic Church to be the communion of saints 
or of holy persons. This was the view of Niceta 
in a homily attributed to him, where the Church 
as the communion of saints includes the living 
and the dead: "What is the Church but the 
congregation of all saints ? Patriarchs, prophets, 
apostles, martyrs, all the just who have been, 
are, or shall be, are one Church, because sanc- 
tified by one faith and life, marked by One Spirit, 
they constitute one body. Believe then that in 
this one Church you will attain the communion 
of saints." 1 

Others have interpreted the clause as de- 
signed to exclude heretics, with whom there 
should be no communion — a view which finds 

1 Cf. Caspari, "Anedota I," p. 355, cited in Swete, "The Apostles' 
Creed," p. 84. A similar view is found in Sermon 241, attributed 
to Augustine and published in appendix to his works. 



1 



HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 63 



support in ancient comments. 1 Again it has been 
maintained that the purpose of its insertion in 
the Creed was to sanction the worship of saints, 
which in the fourth century was opposed by 
Vigilantius and his followers, but became the 
later custom of the Church, — a view maintained 
by Harnack in his short treatise on the Creed. 2 
Still another interpretation, and quite as probable 
as any, refers it to an anti-Donatist purpose, — 
a disclaimer against the Donatist accusation 
that the Catholic Church embraced alike the 
evil and the good, whereas the Church should be 
the body of the pure. 

THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS 

Would seem to stand forth distinctly as a 
supreme principle of the Christian faith were 
it not for inevitable inferences which either 
illumine or darken its meaning : — 

1. That the forgiveness comes directly to the 

1 Cf. John of Damascus, "De Fide Orthodoxa," 13; where in 
speaking of the Eucharist, he warns against communion with here- 
tics. In the "Catechism of the Council of Trent," Ch. 9, Quest. 
22, "Communion of Saints" is regarded as explanatory of the 
Catholic Church and as implying communion in the Eucharist 
from which heretics are excluded. There was an effort to restore 
this meaning to the phrase in the Anglican Church in the last 
century. 

2 "Das Apostolische Glaubensbekenntniss," p. 33. 



64 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



soul from God, on condition of faith and repent- 
ance, without the interposition of any human 
media ; and with the forgiveness comes the 
sense of assurance that sins are forgiven ; 

2. The forgiveness can only be obtained 
through the Sacraments, and by the mediation 
of the priesthood ; and even so, the absolute as- 
surance of forgiveness cannot be imparted in this 
life. 

THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY 

The resurrection of the flesh (resurrectionem 
carnis) was the original meaning; and from 
the second century down to this modern day it 
was the prevailing view that the particles of the 
body laid in the grave would constitute the 
body which should rise again. Tertullian and 
Augustine, among many others, met the scoffers 
of their time who could not believe such teach- 
ing, with what must then have appeared con- 
clusive argument. 

This meaning now seems by almost common 
consent to have been abandoned, and for it is 
substituted a meaning more in accord with sci- 
entific teaching, — that "resurrection of the 
body" implies a spiritual body different from 
the body laid in the grave and not composed of 
the same particles, — an interpretation defended 



HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 65 



by appealing to the Pauline teaching in 1 
Cor. 15. 

THE LIFE EVERLASTING 

Is a statement about which there would be 
little difference of opinion were it not that it in- 
volves the question of everlasting punishment, 
and the issue at once is made whether this latter 
doctrine is part of the teaching of the Creed. 

In his " Exposition of the Creed" it is note- 
worthy that Pearson comments at length on the 
resurrection to endless condemnation as no less 
implied in the phrase "everlasting life," than 
the resurrection to endless happiness. 

On the other hand, according to the decision 
of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council 

(1864):- 

"The hope that the punishment of the 
wicked may not endure to all eternity is cer- 
tainly not at variance with anything that is 
found in the Apostles' Creed." 1 

1 Cf. "Six Judgments of the Judicial Committee of the Privy 
Council, " p. 101, London, 1872. No opinion is here expressed as 
to the authority of the Privy Council; but as bearing witness to the 
variety of interpretations of the Creed its judgment has quite as 
much significance as the opinion of Bishop Pearson, in the seven- 
teenth century. Among those who acted as judges in this case were 
the Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Longley), the Archbishop of 
York (Dr. Thomson), the Bishop of London (Dr. Tait). 

F 



66 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



It is well known that in the original Forty- 
two Articles from which our "Thirty-nine Arti- 
cles" were derived, there was one article, the 
Forty-second, which implied the endless punish- 
ment of the wicked. The rejection of this ar- 
ticle is not without significance for the inter- 
pretation of this phrase in the Creed. 



CHAPTER III 



THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY AND CLERICAL 

HONESTY 

I 

In considering the vows of the clergy at their 
ordination, the question arises whether the Re- 
formers took any steps to prevent a reversion to 
that traditional interpretation of the faith which 
they discarded; or whether they provided for 
the growth of the Church into ever higher and 
fuller knowledge of Christian truth. The study 
of the Ordinal shows that they had no solicitude 
for the creeds, that they were chiefly concerned 
with maintaining the supremacy of Scripture, 
in the study of which lay the safeguards against 
the erroneous and strange doctrines they sought 
to banish. 

It must be borne in mind that the Anglican 
Church has provided no authoritative commen- 
tary on the Creed specifying what interpretation 
shall be given of its separate clauses, with the 
exception of the important authoritative state- 

6 7 



68 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



ment in the Church Catechism, as to what is 
to be "chiefly learned" from the Creed; or, in 
other words, that its supreme object is to set 
forth the name of God, as Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost. 

" First, I learn to believe in God the Father, 
who hath made me and all the world. 

"Secondly, in God the Son, who hath re- 
deemed me and all mankind. 

"Thirdly, in God the Holy Ghost, who 
sanctifieth me and all the people of God." 

The inference seems just and inevitable that 
if any one learns this much from the Creed, he 
has gained what the Church holds to be essential ; 
the other details of the Creed are left to his in- 
dividual judgment, guided by Scripture, to de- 
termine. As a matter of fact, this has been the 
usage since the Reformation and so continues 
to this day. Everywhere a variety of belief has 
existed on these subordinate details. 

This absence of any authoritative commentary 
on the Creed, explaining in elaborate fashion and 
demonstrating the meaning of every and all its 
separate statements, gains the greater signifi- 
cance, when we compare the attitude of the An- 
glican Church, in its one brief statement, as to 
what we are chiefly to learn from the Creed, with 



THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 69 



the expansive, voluminous, and definite expo- 
sitions of other churches — the ''Catechism of 
the Council of Trent/' the "Longer Catechism of 
the Eastern Church" — or the elaborate West- 
minster Confession and Catechisms. 

It was from these very things that the Anglican 
Church in an impressive hour of the world's 
history was seeking to escape. The moment 
was a brief one, but it sufficed for the work to be 
done, — to reduce Christianity to its simplest 
terms, as it was known in the apostolic age or 
in the generation that folllowed. It was no 
haphazard work they were doing. To this 
result the longing aspirations of men for cen- 
turies had been turning. The best, most spirit- 
ual men for more than two centuries had seen 
this as their goal. In the Providence of God, it 
was accomplished in the Church of England. 

But already the ecclesiastical reaction had 
begun, and what was to be done must be done 
quickly. Already the reactionary influence had 
invaded England, and under the fear that reli- 
gion and the Church were in danger, expositions 
of the Apostles' Creed had been set forth in the 
latter years of Henry VIII, which imposed on 
it definite and binding interpretation, involving 
at every point the mediaeval or traditional sense 
of the faith. Let any one read the two treatises, 



70 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 

"The Institution of a Christian Man, contain- 
ing the exposition or interpretation of the 
Common Creed/' etc. (1537), or "A Necessary 
Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian Man" 
(1543), and then turn to the Book of Common 
Prayer, and he will need no other commentary 
on the purpose of the reformers in the matter 
of the Apostles' Creed. The " Freedom " of the 
Christian man was their aim, not his "Institu- 
tion" or "Erudition." It was the ancient as- 
piration — Libera sit ecclesia Anglicana, that 
was at last to be fulfilled. 

It is a misapprehension of the Anglican Church, 
including our own, which has somehow come 
to be widely prevalent, that she enforces upon 
her clergy, however it may be with the laity, 
an oath to receive the Apostles' Creed and to 
believe it and recite it with some authoritative 
sense attached to each phrase, under penalty 
of incurring the stigma of dishonesty and 
perjury. And the burden has grown the heavier 
because a school in the Church, dating from the 
last century, insists that the Creed shall be taken 
in what is now called its "Catholic" sense. And 
it has come about that those who should rejoice 
in the Church in the liberty wherewith Christ 
hath made us free are sensitive and uncertain, 
and even doubt whether they are truly called 



THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 



according to the will of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
to serve in the sacred ministry of His Church. 

In the literature of the Church of England, 
there is a book rarely if ever referred to, an 
almost forgotten book, known as the " Homilies. " 
It is the only book ever set forth by authority, of 
which it is said in the Thirty-fifth of the Articles 
of Religion that it "doth contain a godly 
and wholesome doctrine and necessary for these 
times;' 9 and to this statement the American 
Episcopal Church has added that it is "an 
explication of Christian doctrine, and instruc- 
tive in piety and morals/ 5 It is referred to 
here, because, in its origin, it is contemporary 
with the Prayer Book — those who drew up the 
Ordinal and the Articles being among its com- 
pilers. To understand the vows which the 
clergy assume at ordination, it is indispensable. 
It is, however, chiefly a book for the laity — 
instructing them as to the doctrine of this 
Church, with special insistence on the source 
from which the doctrine is derived. 

It is characteristic of the book of the Homi- 
lies that it nowhere recommends ecclesiastical 
tradition as an authority in this Church; it 
contains no exposition of the Creed. It has 
discourses on the Nativity, on the Passion, and 
Resurrection of our Lord. The first of these 



\ 



72 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



is noticeable for the absence of any effort to 
urge the •Mediaeval conception of the Incarnation, 
which had become the source of confusion and 
weakness. The virgin birth is assumed, but no 
dogmatic importance is attached to it, and Mary 
is not alluded to as "ever Virgin and Mother of 
God," There is no dwelling upon the Gospel 
of the Infancy, but rather on the character and 
work and teaching of the mature Christ, Son of 
God and Son also of Man ; and if there is any 
insistence it is on His perfect humanity, which 
in the preceding ages had been obscured and 
practically lost. 

There is much in the Homilies that in tone is 
antiquated, but its spirit is fresh and strong as 
in the day of its birth. Its keynote is the im- 
portance of "the reading and knowledge of 
Holy Scripture" and not familiarity with Church 
traditions. If men are in doubt, whether clergy 
or laity, it is to Scripture they must turn for 
relief. It is assumed that the laity are capable 
by this method for themselves to reach the 
truth. There is not one source for the clergy 
and another for the people, but Scripture is 
imposed on both alike. The laity are not urged 
to turn to the clergy for light and satisfaction 
in the resolution of difficulties, but to go for 
themselves to the Word of God. The book 



THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 73 

opens with words like these addressed to the 
people in the congregation : — 

"Unto a Christian man there can be 
nothing either more necessary or profitable 
than the knowledge of holy Scripture, foras- 
much as in it is contained God's true word, 
setting forth his glory and also man's duty. 
And there is no truth nor doctrine necessary 
for our justification and everlasting salva- 
tion but that is or may be drawn out of 
that fountain and well of truth. Therefore 
as many as be desirous to enter into the 
right and perfect way unto God, must apply 
their minds to know holy Scripture; with- 
out the which, they can neither sufficiently 
know God and his will, neither their office 
and duty. And as drink is pleasant to them 
that be dry and meat to them that be 
hungry, so is the reading, hearing, search- 
ing of holy Scripture to them that be de- 
sirous to know God, or themselves, and to 
do his will. . . . Let us reverently study 
and read holy Scriptures, which is the food 
of the soul. Let us diligently search for 
the well of life in the books of the Old and 
New Testament, and not run to the stinking 
puddles of men's traditions, devised by men's 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



imaginations for our justification and sal- 
vation. For in Holy Scripture is fully con- 
tained what we ought to do, and what to 
eschew, what to believe, what to love, and 
what to look for at God's hand at length. 
In these books we shall find the Father 
from whom, the Son by whom, and the 
Holy Ghost in whom all things have their 
being and keeping up ; and these three per- 
sons to be but one God and one sub- 
stance/' 1 

The object of the reformers as achieved in 
the Book of Common Prayer was to get away 
from the commandments of men, which had 
been substituted for Christ's commandment, to 
get back again to Christ, and to His will, to 
banish and drive away from the Church "the 
manifold enormities" and "the ungodly doc- 
trine" which had crept into the existing Church 
"unto the utter destruction of innumerable 
souls, if God's mercy were not." 

The articles of the faith were given a promi- 
nent place. The Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and 
the Ten Commandments were to be read openly 
unto the people, that " they may learn how to 
invocate and call upon the name of God, and 

1 "The First Homily," pp. I, 2. 



THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 



know what duty they owe to God and man, so 
that they may pray, believe, and work accord- 
ing to knowledge." But first and foremost and 
above all was "the Word of God, which is the 
only food of the soul, and that most excellent 
light that we must walk by in this our most 
dangerous pilgrimage;" and it is at all times to 
be preached to the people, as a means of learn- 
ing their duty and to avoid "the false doctrine 
which has crept into the Church of God." 

"Calling to remembrance that the next 
and most ready way to expel and avoid as 
well all corrupt, vicious, and ungodly living, 
as also erroneous doctrine tending toward 
superstition and idolatry; and clearly to 
put away all contention, which hath hereto- 
fore risen through diversity of preaching, is 
the true setting forth and pure declaring of 
God's Word." 1 

"God grant all us ... to feed of the 
sweet and savoury bread of God's own Word, 
and (as Christ commanded) to eschew all our 
Pharisaical and papistical leaven of man's 
feigned religion; which although it were 
before God most abominable and contrary 
to God's commandments and Christ's pure 

1 Preface to the " Homilies," 1547. 



76 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



religion, yet it was praised to be a most godly 
life and highest state of perfection; as 
though a man might be more godly and more 
perfect, by keeping the rules, traditions, and 
professions of men than by keeping the holy 
commandments of God/' 1 

In recent years, with the revival of the " Catho- 
lic tradition" within the Church, an undue im- 
portance has been assigned to the creeds. There 
are many upon whose conscience and intellect 
the details of the creeds do not press heavily. 
They are aware in reciting them that part of 
their content makes no appeal to their spiritual 
nature. They take them in a large and general, 
undogmatic way, as a whole, rather than part 
by part. They have imbibed the teaching of 
the Church Catechism that the creeds present 
God's fatherhood, Christ's leadership by which 
he delivers humanity, and the inward presence 
of a Holy Spirit with His sanctifying influence. 
They would fain escape from the suggestion of 
controversy which the creeds carry as an at- 
mosphere, into the undogmatic, the purer air 
of Holy Scripture, before the baleful contro- 
versies began. They are aware that interpre- 

1 " Third part of the Sermon of Good Works," in "Homilies," 
p. 52, Am. ed., Philadelphia, 1844. 



THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 



tations and inferences connected by tradition 
with the creeds are alien to their higher spiritual 
instincts and tend to lessen the freedom where- 
with Christ hath made us free. 

Such as these, and they are many, are closer to 
the purpose of our formularies than those who 
seek to rivet the chains of the "Catholic sense" 
upon the freer spirit of Anglican piety; they 
hear with a curious surprise that if they do not 
take each separate phrase in a fixed meaning, 
as the "Catholic sense" has determined, that 
they are recreant to their vows, perjurers, dis- 
honest, eating the Church's bread while denying 
its faith. But they have not so learned the An- 
glican Church. Nor were they aware that such 
dangers lay in their path, when as children, 
being now come to the years of discretion, they 
professed the Christian faith at Confirmation. 

In their unconscious infancy the question was 
asked of their sponsors in baptism, "Dost thou 
believe all the articles of the Christian faith as 
they are contained in the Apostles' Creed ? " 
And at Confirmation they were called upon to 
"renew the solemn vow and promise made in 
their name at baptism, ratifying and confirming 
the same, and acknowledging themselves bound 
to believe and to do all those things which their 
sponsors then undertook for them." 



yS FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 

The preliminary to Confirmation was a knowl- 
edge of the Church Catechism, where the Creed 
was reduced to its essential contents, — the Divine 
name in its threefoldness, the Father, the Son, 
and the Holy Ghost, with the distinctive work of 
each. For the rest, the Church Catechism had 
laid strong emphasis on the moral duties of life 
and on the elements of Christian character. 
Nowhere does the purpose of the Reformers 
appear more clearly than in the two concluding 
exhortations of the Baptismal office, where it is 
not the Creed that is made prominent, but Chris- 
tian character; and baptism is set forth as repre- 
senting unto us our profession — to follow the 
example of our Saviour Christ and be made like 
unto Him. At Confirmation the Creed was not 
recited, 1 but at that solemn moment the mind 
was centred on the resolution by God's grace 
"obediently to keep God's holy will and com- 
mandment and walk in the same all the days of 
their life." 

But if this constitutes subscription to the Creed, 
it is binding upon the laity ; and upon the clergy, 
so far as they share with the laity a common 
obligation. For at their ordination, the clergy, 

1 In the American Prayer Book the Apostles' Creed is not re- 
cited at baptism; in the English book is is given in full, in the 
interrogative form. 



THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 79 



as has been said earlier, do not profess the Creed 
as part of their ordination vow. What could 
the Anglican Church have meant when she de- 
liberately rejected from the reformed Ordinal 
that most sensitive act of the Roman Ordinal, 
where the candidate for the priesthood solemnly, 
in the presence of the bishop and before the altar, 
repeats the Apostles' Creed as his profession of 
faith, the condition as it were of his admission 
to holy orders ? When acts like this are omitted 
does it mean that the mind of the Church is to 
enforce them more rigidly by its silence and by 
abstention from all allusion ? When a bishop is 
consecrated according to the Roman, or un- 
iformed, Ordinal, all the emphasis and im- 
pressiveness of the rite is concentrated on his 
examination in the Nicene Creed, which is 
applied interrogatively with a searching rigidity. 
That, too, the Anglican Church omitted from 
the office of making a bishop. 

It would, indeed, have been most strange 
and inconsistent, if the authors of our formu- 
laries, having provided no explicit exposition 
of the creeds, beyond the simple comment in the 
Church Catechism, should have demanded such 
subscription, and such an oath of obedience from 
the candidates for her ministry. There is a 
deeper meaning here and a profounder purpose 



8o FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



in the Anglican Church, a more thoroughgoing 
reformation, than we have dared allow ourselves 
to believe was possible. It has been covered up 
and glossed over, but it remains a potent influ- 
ence within the Church which cannot be over- 
come. 

The method would have been a most simple 
and feasible one had it been the aim of the Or- 
dinal to secure a cast-iron oath of subscription 
to the Creed on the part of the clergy, which no 
subtlety of interpretation could have evaded. 
Such a result is attained in the Roman Church. 
It was just this result which the Anglican re- 
formers apparently sought to avoid. A new light 
had dawned on them by the study of God's Word, 
and in that light they saw that the full conception 
of Christ and His work could never be obtained 
by formal subscription to a creed. A new 
conception of the Incarnation and its meaning 
to the world had been gained. The Church 
had reached its maturity. The Gospel of the 
Infancy which satisfied the Middle Ages was 
no longer adequate, with the revelation of Christ 
in the open book confronting them. They were 
departing from that view of the Incarnation 
which had prevailed from the fifth century, and 
which justified itself by inferences from the 
creeds, till by long association it had become 



THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 81 



identified with them. They were under no delu- 
sion regarding the value of the Creed when com- 
pared with the Scripture. Their emphasis was 
withdrawn from creeds and placed on Scripture, 
to which the candidate for the ministry of this 
Church was called to give his entire and unre- 
served allegiance. 

What vows then has the Anglican Church 
substituted for the subscription to the Creeds 
which was the fundamental vow of the Ordinal 
before the Reformation ? 

"Are you persuaded that the Holy Scrip- 
tures contain all doctrine required as neces- 
sary for eternal salvation through faith in 
Jesus Christ ? And are you determined out 
of said Scriptures to instruct the people com- 
mitted to your charge : and to teach nothing 
as necessary to eternal salvation, but that 
which you shall be persuaded may be con- 
cluded and proved by the Scripture ? 

"Will you then give your faithful diligence 
so to minister the Doctrine and the Sacra- 
ments and the Discipline of Christ as the 
Lord hath commanded and as this Church 
hath received the same, according to the 
commandments of God? 

"Will you be ready with all faithful dili- 

G 



82 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



gence to banish and drive away from the 
Church all erroneous and strange doctrine 
contrary to God's Word ? . . . 

"Will you be diligent in prayers and in 
reading Holy Scriptures, and in such studies 
as help to the knowledge of the same ? " 1 

No one of these vows was in the Ordinal 
before the Reformation. They must be taken 
together. In reality they form but one vow, 
whose purpose is to elevate Scripture above 
tradition and by so doing to make the Church 
of England free. 

It has somehow come to be taken for granted 
by many that there is a conflict here, — that the 
first vow which calls for private or individual 
judgment and persuasion as to the teaching of 
Scripture is one horn of a dilemma, and that the 
other horn on which we are in danger of being 
impaled is "the doctrine as this Church hath 
received the same"; and that if there is any 
reconciliation possible of this contradiction, it 

1 In the Ordering of Deacons is contained the question, "Do 
you unfeignedly believe all the Canonical Scriptures of the Old 
and New Testament ?" Here the purpose is clear not to exclude 
from the Bible, as "the Word of God, containing all things necessary 
to salvation, 99 any of the books recognized in the Articles (Art. VI) 
as canonical. Equally clear is the purpose which shuts out the 
Apocryphal books from the Canon. 



THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 83 

must be attained by subordinating one's conclu- 
sions about truth drawn from the Scripture to 
"the doctrine as this Church hath received the 
same/' And those who rest upon this second 
vow as the more important keep a vigilant eye 
upon those who think their primal duty is to 
preach from the depth of their inward conviction. 

But there is no conflict between the vows. 
They have the same common aim. It is a super- 
ficial and unhistorical view, and does grave in- 
justice to the authors of the Ordinal, to think 
that they could hamper the clergy by such a 
dilemma or entangle them on such a snag. 
The moment was too critical, the danger too 
great ; the fortunes of the realm and of the Re- 
formed Church of England were at stake when 
the Ordinal was put forth. There is deep sin- 
cerity and painstaking unity of purpose in the 
various forms of what really is but one vow of 
the clergy in the reformed Ordinal. To minister 
the doctrine as this Church hath received the 
same, does not mean as it hath received it from 
tradition, thus identifying the Reformed Church 
with the Church of the past ; but the doctrine 
as set forth in the Articles of Religion, whose 
object at every turn is to protest against the 
errors involved in the commandments of men, 
which Rome had added to the Christian faith, — 



84 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



its gross anthropomorphism, its inadequate con- 
ception of the Incarnation, its elevation of tra- 
dition to an equality with Scripture, its neglect 
of the study of Scripture, its perversion of the 
Lord's Supper into a sacrificial mass, its irrational 
and unscriptural doctrine of transubstantiation, 
its mutilated administration of the holy com- 
munion, its injury done to the discipline of 
Christ by the practice of compulsory confession, 
and by monastic vows of celibacy. To guard 
against these things is one object in requiring of 
the clergy that they shall minister the doctrine 
as this Church hath received the same. 

The purport of this vow becomes clearer, if 
all the phraseology, which accompanies it, is 
taken into consideration. A closer study shows 
where the emphasis lies. It is the "doctrine 
(of Christ) and sacraments (of Christ) and dis- 
cipline of Christ, as the Lord hath commanded 
and as this Church hath received the same 
according to the commandments of God/ 9 

A good commentary on these words may be 
found by turning again to that contemporaneous 
treatise, "The Homilies/' which has much to 
say about the commandments of God as over 
against the commandments of the Church or 
of men. Speaking of the previous age and of 
the ecclesiastical conditions from which the 



THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 85 



Reformation was liberating men, the homily 
"Of good works " remarks: — 

"Such hath been the corrupt inclination of 
man, ever superstitiously given to make new 
honouring of God of his own head, and then 
to have more affection and devotion to keep 
that than to search out God's holy command- 
ments and to keep them. And furthermore, 
to take God's commandments for men's 
commandments, and men's commandments 
for God's commandments, yea, and for the 
highest and most perfect and holy of all 
God's commandments. And so was all 
confused, that scant well learned men, and 
but a small number of them knew, or at the 
least would know, and durst affirm the truth, 
to separate or sever God's commandments from 
the commandments of men. Wherefore did 
grow much error, superstition, idolatry, 
vain religion, overthwart {preposterous) 
judgment, great contention with all ungodly 
living.' 9 ("The Homilies," p. 53.) 

Passages of this kind abound in "The Homi- 
lies." Another may be cited : — 

"Nowhere can we more certainly search 
for the knowledge of this will of God but in 



86 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



the Holy Scriptures, for they be they that 
testify of him, saith our Saviour Christ. . . . 
We see what vanity the school-doctrine is 
mixed with, for that in this Word they 
sought not the will of God, but rather the will 
of reason, the trade of custom, the path of 
the fathers, the practice of the Church: let 
us therefore read and revolve the Holy Scrip- 
tures both day and night, for blessed is he 
who hath his whole meditation therein." 
(" Homilies," p. 435.) 

v 

The phrases, then, so often omitted, when 
reference is made to the vow of the clergy, are 
of supreme importance to its correct interpreta- 
tion. It is not merely the " doctrine as this 
Church hath received the same" but "the doc- 
trine of Christ, as the Lord hath commanded, and 
as this Church hath received the same according 
to the commandments of God " If this qualifica- 
tion be kept in view there is no conflict, but 
entire harmony with the preceeding vow, "to 
teach nothing but what you shall be persuaded 
may be concluded and proved by the Scripture." 

The connection between the vows, which 
identifies them as having one common end and 
meaning, is further evidenced by the word 
"then;" "will you then" ox will you therefore, 



THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 87 



seeing that you have already grasped the essen- 
tial truth, that all doctrine must come from 
the teaching of Christ contained in Scripture, 
with an inward persuasion of its truth — will 
you then minister the doctrine of Christ, as 
Christ hath commanded, and as this Church 
hath received it from Him, and proclaims it, 
holding it according to God's commandments, 
and not from tradition, or the commandments 
of men. And lest there should be a danger of 
falling into conventional ways and stereotyped 
opinions, as to what Scripture teaches, another 
vow is exacted calling for its continual study, as 
the life work of the ministry. No allusion is 
here to the study of tradition or to decisions of 
synods, however imposing, or to the voice of the 
fathers in ancient times; but "will you be dili- 
gent * * * in reading the Holy Scriptures and in 
such studies as help to the knowledge of the 
same?" One must turn to the Greek and Ro- 
man Ordinals to measure the significance of 
this impressive vow by the contrast they offer. 
In the Greek office is a special question to the 
candidate for episcopal consecration, — which 
is answered at very great length, — "Ex- 
plain how thou holdest the Canons of the Holy 
Apostles and the Holy Fathers." And indeed 
in both Greek and Latin Ordinals, the bishop 



88 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



elect (of the presbyter, little account is taken) 
seems to be called upon mainly to light over 
again the theological issues of the ancient 
Church in the fourth and fifth centuries. 

There is then no evidence to be drawn, from 
the vows which the clergy assume in ordination, 
that the Creed was, as in some feeling of emer- 
gency, an object of solicitude, or that it was re- 
garded as binding upon the clergy and not 
equally binding on the laity. The vow of the 
clergy to maintain the doctrine of Christ as this 
Church hath received it sends them back to 
Christ, — as the Lord hath commanded, — in 
order to learn the doctrine received by the Church 
according to the commandments of God and 
not according to the traditions of men. 

Further evidence for the truth of this position 
is seen in the circumstance that from the Refor- 
mation down to our own day the oath of sub- 
scription in the Church of England has been 
taken to the Thirty-nine Articles and not to 
creeds as such. Incumbents of parishes and 
students admitted to the universities were re- 
quired to make this subscription. Of the Creeds 
it is said in the VHIth Article that they ought 
"thoroughly to be received and believed," but 
the reason added is significant, "because they 
may be proved by most certain warrant of Holy 



THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 89 



Scripture. Testing the creeds by Scripture may 
lead to a larger and truer interpretation of 
their meaning than when they are interpreted 
by tradition dating from the fifth century and 
received on the authority of such tradition. 
The Vlllth Article is further qualified by the 
comment on the primary intent of the Creed as 
given in the Church Catechism. Another quali- 
fication will be noted in the following chapter. 

In reference to the subject of subscription 
any allusion to it would be incomplete without 
mention of the present "relaxed" form of sub- 
cription, which in the English Church has been 
substituted for the earlier more stringent form. 
For two centuries, or since 1662, the form was, 
"I hereby declare my unfeigned assent and con- 
sent to all and everything prescribed in and by 
the Book of Common Prayer." 1 In 1865 the 



1 According to the Canons of the Church of England, 1604, it 
reads (Canon xxxvi): "No one shall hereafter be received into the 
ministry, ... or admitted to any ecclesiastical living, nor suffered 
to preach, etc., unless he shall subscribe to these three articles 
following : — 

" 1 . (As this article relates to the King's supremacy it is sufficient 
only to allude to it here.) 

" 2. That the Book of Common Prayer and of ordering bishops, 
priests, and deacons, containeth in it nothing contrary to the Word 
of God, and that it may be lawfully so used; and that he himself 
will use the form in the said book prescribed, in public prayer, 
and administration of the Sacraments, and none other. 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



form was changed to read, "I assent to the 
Thirty-nine Articles and to the Book of Com- 
mon Prayer/' The first of these forms of sub- 
scription dates from 1662, when the object of 
the Act of Uniformity was to eject Nonconform- 
ists from the Church. After any danger in this 
direction had ceased, there began an agitation, 
continued through the eighteenth century, for a 
more relaxed and general form of subscription. 
In the American Episcopal Church, which in- 
herited a strong tendency toward relaxation at 
the time when the Prayer Book was put forth 
in 1789, the relaxed form of subscription reads, 
"I do solemnly engage to conform to the doc- 
trines and worship of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church in the United States." This form of 
subscription was regarded as a great advantage 
gained over the English form. In the present 
form of the English subscription oath, the drop- 
ping of consent, and retaining only assent, points 

" 3. That he alloweth the Book of Articles of Religion, agreed 
upon by the archbishops and bishops of both provinces and the 
whole clergy, in the year of our Lord God 1562; and that he 
acknowledged all and every the articles therein contained ... to 
be agreeable to the word of God. 

" To these three articles whoever will subscribe, he shall for the 
avoiding of ambiguities subscribe in this order and form of words, 
setting down both his Christian and surname : I, N. N., do willingly 
and ex ammo subscribe to these three articles above mentioned, 
and to all things contained in them. ,, 



THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 



strongly in the direction of relaxation, and of 
relief for "troubled consciences. " But Maurice 
may have been right when he maintained in 
1834 that subscription to the Articles was a 
"defence of liberty." And in I852, although he 
had in some respects changed his mind in regard 
to their subscription, he could still write, "I 
am more convinced than ever that the Articles 
are more comprehensive (being also less loose 
and capricious) than the dogmas of our dif- 
ferent parties, and that we should be far more 
at the mercy of the most intolerant private judg- 
ments and public opinion if we lost them." 1 
These words sound like a prophecy of what 
would be attempted in our own generation. 
But it must be admitted and maintained if 
possible, that when the Church after long delib- 
eration "relaxes" the form of subscription, it 
does not intend that advantage shall be taken 
of the relaxation to make the oath more stringent 
and inclusive than before, or that any party in 
the Church shall be thereby enabled to fasten on 
the clergy its own rigid conception of what the 
subscription oath involves. 

It is not wise, and certainly it is not the spirit of 
Christian charity, to fling the accusation of dis- 



1 "Life of Maurice," vol. i, p. 168, and vol. ii, p. 154. 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



honesty against the clergy. And if it is brought 
against the clergy, it must be laid with equal 
justice against the laity. The Anglican Church 
makes no discrimination between them in the 
matter of reciting or professing the Creed. 

But surely the appeal, when the interpreta- 
tion of the Creed is at issue, should not be car- 
ried to the man on the street. Commercial tests 
are not the standard for judging religious con- 
victions or deciding on their accordance with 
theological formularies. It is rather to human 
documents that we must go, if we would make 
comparison, such as written constitutions of the 
State, capable of diverse and even interpreta- 
tions absolutely contradicting each other; or 
to legal formulas or statutes which have been 
stretched to cover cases never originally con- 
templated. Human preference and usage in 
these departments of life has shown itself reluc- 
tant to make new constitutions or new statutes 
when the old can be so construed as to include 
the new experience. In this way jurisprudence 
has grown. For it seems to shake the sanctions 
of law, if it should appear that the old statutes 
did not cover the whole range of human interests. 
This has been called "legal fiction/' but it repre- 
sents a process by which law has been developed. 
In his "Ancient Law," Sir Henry Maine has 



THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 93 

made some important remarks, which are not 
without their bearing on the history of creeds. 

"Legal fiction signifies any assumption, 
which conceals or affects to conceal, the 
fact that a rule of law has undergone altera- 
tion, its letter remaining unchanged, its 
operation being modified. . . . The law 
has been wholly changed; the 'fiction' is 
that it remains what it always was. . . . 
Fictions in all their forms are particularly 
congenial to the infancy of society. They 
satisfy the desire for improvement, which is 
not quite wanting, at the same time that 
they do not offend the superstitious dis- 
relish for change which is always present. 
At a particular stage of social progress, 
they are invaluable expedients for over- 
coming the rigidity of law. . . . To revile 
them as merely fraudulent is to betray 
ignorance of their peculiar office in the his- 
torical development of law. . . . There are 
several fictions still exercising a powerful 
influence on English jurisprudence, which 
could not be discarded without a severe 
shock to the ideas, and considerable change 
in the language of English practitioners. . . . 
Nothing is more distasteful to men, either 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



as individuals or as masses, than the ad- 
mission of their moral progress as a sub- 
stantive reality. This unwillingness shows 
itself, as regards individuals, in the exagger- 
ated respect which is ordinarily paid to the 
doubtful virtue of consistency. The move- 
ment of the collective opinion of a whole 
society is too palpable to be ignored and is 
generally too visibly for the better to be de- 
cried ; but there is the greatest disinclination 
to accept it as a primary phenomenon, and 
it is commonly explained as the recovery of 
a lost perfection — the gradual return to a 
state from which the race had lapsed. This 
tendency to look backward instead of 
forward produced anciently, as we have seen, 
on Roman jurisprudence effects the most 
serious and permanent." (Pp. 26, 32, 33, 

67.) 

If the same distinction be carried into the 
sphere of theology, then there would be theo- 
logical "fictions/' such as maintaining that the 
Creeds are immutable in their meaning, while 
in such clauses as the "descent into hell," or the 
"Catholic Church," or the "resurrection of the 
flesh," not to mention others, their meaning has 
been revolutionized. But to stigmatize this 



THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 



process as dishonest would involve bringing an 
indictment against the whole process of religious 
development. 

The opinion, then, of the man on the street has 
but little value on the question of the interpre- 
tation of the Creeds. The subject is too subtle, 
too complicated ; it involves also the possibility 
of real meanings, and apparent meanings, of un- 
conscious modifications, under the influence of 
the spirit of the age, which is forever changing. 
To ask a Roman Catholic what his judgment 
would be on the inversion of meaning in the 
phrase, "the HolyCatholic Church/' would bring 
an answer condemning the Anglican Church to 
the guilt of dishonest subterfuge and evasion. 
But such a verdict would have little significance, 
although to his mind it would be a question of 
simple honesty — professing to believe in the 
Holy Catholic Church when the historic sense of 
the phrase had been abandoned. 

There is no universally recognized court of 
appeal in organized Christianity to which these 
questions can be submitted, in the confidence of 
an intelligent, impartial, and satisfactory judg- 
ment. And certainly, least of all, can the 
judgment of those have any value, who, having 
discarded creeds, insist that honesty in others 
who retain them calls for rigid adherence to their 



96 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



face meaning and in the most literal fashion, 
regardless of the variety of interpretation which 
history has sanctioned. The object of those who 
seek in this way to impugn the honesty of the 
clergy is clear enough; they are performing a 
double duty, not only advocating honesty and 
sincerity in general, but making it so disagreeable 
a task where creeds are concerned as to lead to 
the abandonment of creeds altogether. Which 
of these two motives predominates, it is not 
necessary here to determine. But any one who 
looks a little closely into the matter may be ex- 
cused for thinking that this unattainable ethical 
standard for creed subscription, urged by those 
who have rejected creeds, involves a primary 
purpose in controversial theology, or sectarian 
rivalry. 

There are other illustrations in history which 
show that the accusation of dishonesty against 
the clergy must be taken at least with some 
qualifications. In the ecclesiastical as in the 
political sphere, it may be possible that the use 
of such strong terms, as dishonesty, perjury, 
treachery, too often repeated, and against per- 
sons of otherwise upright character, will lose 
their force and come to have a merely par- 
tisan meaning. Thus the charge of breaking 
the solemn vows of consecration to the epis- 



THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 97 

copate was brought against Archbishop Cran- 
mer and other English bishops — to say nothing 
of the large number of English clergy — and 
against professed monks in the Reformation 
who broke their monastic vows. The mind of 
Catholic Europe was aghast at Martin Luther, 
who threw his ordination and monastic vows to 
the winds, as having no obligation whatever on 
a free Christian man who had rediscovered the 
true Gospel of Christ. Another illustration may 
be cited as bearing on the question of clerical 
honesty in more recent times. 

In the Autobiography of Isaac Williams, who 
was a friend of the late Cardinal Newman, is 
this statement (p. 125): "Newman said to 
Copeland, 6 Could you sign the Thirty-nine 
Articles? I could not/" But this was in 
Newman's Anglican days, and he had already 
made his subscription to the Articles. His 
mind was undergoing a change, he had really 
repudiated the Articles, but he did not propose 
in consequence to leave the Church of England. 
His thought was moving Romewards, some of 
his disciples had already left the Church of 
England for Rome and others were preparing 
to follow. The Thirty-nine Articles, taken in 
the sense of their compilers, made it impossible 
for them to remain. Then Newman was moved 



H 



98 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



to assault the citadel of Anglican liberty, not from 
without but from within. He wrote a treatise, 
the famous Tract XC, in which he aimed 
to show that the Articles had been so loosely or 
inadvertently drawn that they might be gram- 
matically construed into a sense opposite to 
their original purport. By the aid of his un- 
rivalled dialectic, he traversed the Articles and 
reversed their meaning, till it almost seemed as 
if the object of the Protestant reformers had 
been to reunite the Anglican Church with the 
Church of Rome. The Thirty-nine Articles were 
made to seem patient of an interpretation which 
harmonized them with the definitions of the 
Council of Trent. It is a familiar story — the 
consternation into which England was thrown, 
which finds its only parallel in the ancient 
church, in the time of the Arian controversy. 
From that moment Newman's days in the Angli- 
can Church were numbered. But nothing that 
he ever wrote or confessed showed that the 
attempt to undo the Thirty-nine Articles rested 
upon his conscience. His devoted friend and 
admirer, Dr. Pusey, who refused to follow him, 
defended the effort to "reinterpret" the Articles. 
On the basis of this reinterpretation, which re- 
versed their original purport, many were enabled 
to remain in the Church of England who must 



THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 



otherwise have left. From this time a "Catholic " 
sense was imposed on the formularies of the 
Book of Common Prayer, and apparently with 
a clear conscience. A new school arose who 
appropriated as their own the Anglican Church, 
making it over to suit their own convenience, 
till at last those who sought to stand on the 
foundations of the Reformation appeared as no 
better than traitors to God and humanity. 

In questions about the interpretation of the 
Creed, the judgment of the "man on the street' 5 
has no value, even though it find vigorous and 
severe expression in the utterances of the secular 
press. For the "man on the street does not care 
a rap about dogmatic formularies and subtle- 
ties/' and it is just these very things which are 
at issue. In the matter of religion, no amount 
of business training or skill in journalism or 
knowledge of affairs is of any avail. Religion 
has its own laws, it is guided by deep motives, 
which only those interested or, as it were, ob- 
sessed by them can understand. 

Let us take an example. In Old Testament 
history we read how the brethren of Joseph sold 
him a captive to traders going down into Egypt. 
They acted with a definite purpose and for this 
very end. They were responsible for their deed. 
But when, years afterward, they themselves were 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



forced to go to Egypt because of the famine, they 
encountered their brother in a high official 
position, and they were afraid in consequence 
of their evil act. And Joseph said unto them, 
"Now it was not you that brought me hither , but 
God/' What would the verdict of the "man on 
the street" be, when, knowing the circumstances, 
he was confronted with this statement ? To his 
mind it would seem as plain as daylight that 
Joseph was guilty of falsehood in denying what 
was a simple matter of fact. But in Joseph's 
mind, the matter of fact had faded away into 
legend or myth or unreality, and only the spirit- 
ual reality behind the fact remained. 



CHAPTER IV 



INTERPRETATION OF THE VIRGIN-BIRTH IN 
THE ANCIENT CHURCH 

"The truth of a Creed/' said Coleridge, 
"must be tried by the Holy Scripture; but the 
sense of the Creed by the known sentiments and 
inferred intentions of its compilers." It is not 
with its truth, then, as tested by Holy Scripture, 
but with its sense, that we are concerned, as 
we come to the clause "born of the Virgin 
Mary." The apparent meaning may not have 
been the original purpose and intention. There 
is evidence tending to show that the primary 
object in alluding to the birth of Christ was to 
maintain the reality of His human birth, His birth 
of a woman whose name is given, just as in the 
case of His death the name of Pontius Pilate is 
mentioned in order to verify the fact. The Creed 
is chiefly concerned at this point with the asser- 
tion of the full humanity of Christ, not of His 
divinity. In a later age when the controver- 
sies of the second century had been forgotten, 
another interpretation was placed upon this 

IOI 



102 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 

clause, which put the stress upon the Virgin- 
birth. But meantime great changes had passed 
over the Church, and in consequence of them 
the original sense of the Creed had been lost. 

In the earliest form of the Apostles' Creed, 1 
which is known among students of the creeds 
as the Old Roman Creed, originating in Rome, 
it is thought, about the middle of the second 
century, the clause had not yet been inserted — 
''conceived by the Holy Ghost." That may 
have been added a generation or more later. 
The related clauses of the Creed then ran in 
the earliest form : — 

"Born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under 
Pontius Pilate, and buried, rose again from 
the dead on the third day." 

Birth, death, and resurrection as actual and 
historic facts are thus grouped together. Here 

1 The best book of reference for the ancient creeds and rules of 
faith is Hahn, "Bibliothek der Svmbole," 1897. As it is not in- 
tended here to make any special study of the creeds, the reader 
may be referred for the bibliography to Dr. McGiffert, "The 
Apostles' Creed/' pp. 3-5. Caspari's exhaustive studies, covering 
many years, have been succeeded by the very important work of 
Kattenbusch, "Das Apostolische Symbol," Bd. i, 1894; Bd. ii, 
1900. Among works from the Anglican point of view may be 
mentioned: Heurtley, "Harmonia Symbolica" and " De fide et 
Symbolo"; Swainson, "The Xicene and Apostles' Creeds"; also 
Schaff's "Creeds of Christendom." 



INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIN-BIRTH 103 



may be noted the position of the early Catholic 
Church as compared with the preaching of the 
Apostolic Age, that it added the birth of Christ 
to His passion and resurrection, giving to it an 
equal place. According to the emphatic decla- 
ration of St. Paul, the "rule of faith" included 
only the passion and the resurrection : — 

" For I delivered unto you first of all that 
which I also received, how that Christ died 
for our sins according to the Scriptures, and 
that he was buried, and that he rose again 
according to the Scriptures/' 1 

The early apostolic preaching was chiefly 
concerned with the significance of the death of 
Christ. But in the old Roman Creed it is the 
fact of the death that is important, and no inter- 
pretation is offered. And to the fact of the death 
is added the fact of the birth of Christ, as 
together constituting the assertion of His actual 
humanity, and the reality of His earthly life. 
The outlook had changed for the Church when 
it began to take possession of the Roman Em- 
pire. The emphasis of St. Paul was no longer 

1 Cf. also 2 Tim. ii. 8, for what Zahn thinks belonged to a 
formula of St. Paul: "Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of 
David was raised from the dead according to my gospel." 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



the emphasis required by the Church for the 
successful prosecution of its work. The Catholic 
Church was encountering dreams and imagina- 
tions, fantasies of religious creation, myths, a 
whole world of unrealities. The religious faith 
of the heathens reposed in beings who were 
fictions only, and had never existed; the reli- 
gious imagination of the time was most prolific ; 
but what the world needed and wanted was 
reality. Of none of these deities whom men were 
vainly worshipping could it be said they had 
actually existed. 

Here lay the opportunity and motive of the 
Church as it began its conquest of the empire — 
to assert that the Son of God had actually and 
truly been born into the world of human life 
as a man, and had actually suffered and died on 
the cross. The interpretation of these facts 
was simple and intelligible enough, if the facts 
only were established and accepted. 

But not only was the need of reality the most 
urgent need of the heathen world, but within the 
Church itself there was a pressing demand for the 
actual historic fact, in order to overcome the 
vicious tendency of the religious imagination, 
taken over from the heathen world, to get rid 
of facts, in order to give the imagination a chance 
to soar. Hence the chief danger to the Church 



INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIN-BIRTH 105 



in the second century was from within, from 
those who denied the fact of Christ's humanity, 
who idealized away His birth or His death ; who 
made Him a phantom or a vision, by which new 
thought had been imparted and a new stimulus 
given to life. To this way of looking at Christ 
as humanity personified or idealized, there was 
added another tendency more dangerous still 
to true religion — that human life was a low, 
unworthy thing, that no divine being could de- 
scend so low as to take a human body, that 
human desires and passions were evil. If we 
should say that in the various forms of Gnosti- 
cism, Oriental religion, and particularly Bud- 
dhism, was seeking an entrance into the empire 
through the Christian Church, we should not be 
far from the truth ; or if we were grateful to the 
old Roman Creed, because it made an emphatic 
and successful protest against Buddhism and 
saved the world from the calamity of its gospel 
of despair, our gratitude would not be misplaced. 

The chief error against which the Roman 
Creed was protesting is known as Docetism — 
the doctrine that Christ did not have a body or a 
human birth or an actual death. The Doce- 
tists were not averse to the gospel of the infancy 
or to the miraculous conception and birth of 
Christ, for they could easily in ways of their 



io6 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



own adjust a miraculous birth to their own pur- 
pose, as no real birth, and they were willing to 
admit that Jesus might in some transcendent 
way have passed through the body of Mary in 
order to His manifestation in the world or the im- 
partation of His message. But He was not actu- 
ally born, and He did not actually suffer or die. 

Ignatius, bishop of Antioch (110-117 a.d.) is 
the writer to whom we turn for evidence as to 
the original sense of the Creed, in its affirmation, 
"born of the Virgin Mary." Interesting ques- 
tions must be passed over here, as irrelevant, 
whether Ignatius knew the Roman Creed, or 
whether that Creed originated in Asia Minor 
and was carried thence to Rome. The tendency 
of scholars at present is to maintain that it 
originated at Rome, and was carried from there 
to Asia Minor. But so early as the time of 
Ignatius, there were formulas in use, which are 
striking reminders of the Roman formulas, which 
couple the birth and the passion in organic con- 
nection. The following passage from Ignatius 
shows how close was the resemblance, but also, 
which is more important, what was the earliest 
interpretation : — 

"Jesus Christ, who was descended from 
David, and was also of Mary ; who was truly 



INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIN-BIRTH 107 



born, and did eat and drink ; He was truly- 
persecuted under Pontius Pilate; He was 
truly crucified and (truly) died, in the sight 
of beings in heaven, and on earth, and 
under the earth ; He was truly raised from 
the dead. ("Ad. Trail," ix.) 

Ignatius had heard of the Virgin-birth; he 
was the first writer to allude to it after its presen- 
tation in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew; 
and he lived not far from the time when those 
Gospels were published. He liked the miracu- 
lous element. The story of the Magi and of 
the star he retells in his own impressive way. 
His comment is characteristic, with that tone 
of mystic exaltation found so often in his 
writings. 

"Now the virginity of Mary was hidden 
from the prince of this world, as was also her 
offspring, and the death of the Lord ; three 
mysteries of renown, which were wrought in 
silence by God." ("Ad Eph.," xix.) 

But in dealing with the rule of faith, it is not 
the Virgin-birth to which he attaches importance, 
but the actual, human birth of Christ as a real 
man, with flesh and blood and born of a human 
mother. These are the references : — 



io8 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



"There is one physician who is possessed 
both of flesh and spirit; both made and 
not made; God existing in flesh; true life 
in death ; both of Mary and of God." (" Ad 
Ephes.," vii.) 

"Jesus Christ was, according to the 
appointment of God, conceived in the womb 
by Mary, of the seed of David, but by the 
Holy Ghost." ("Ad Ephes.," xviii.) 

"I desire to guard you beforehand . . . 
that ye attain to full assurance in regard to 
the birth and passion and resurrection, which 
took place in the time of the government of 
Pontius Pilate, being truly and certainly ac- 
complished by Jesus Christ who is our hope. 
("Ad Mag.," xi.) 

"He was truly of the seed of David ac- 
cording to the flesh, and the Son of God 
according to the will and power of God; 
that He was truly born of a virgin, was bap- 
tized by John . . . and was truly, under 
Pontius Pilate and Herod the Tetrarch, 
nailed (to the cross) for us in His flesh. 

"Now, He suffered all these things for our 
sakes,that we might be saved. And He suf- 
fered truly, even as also He truly raised up 
Himself, not as certain unbelievers maintain, 
that He only seemed to suffer ... for I 



INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIN-BIRTH 109 

know that after His resurrection also, He was 
still possessed of flesh, and I believe that He 
is now." (" Ad Smyr.," ii, iii.) 

Out of such phrases and expressions and out 
of the mood which begot them, arose the old 
Roman Creed, more terse and condensed and 
perhaps more emphatic for the omission of 
adjectives intended to intensify the meaning. 
That the purpose of Ignatius was to make 
emphatic the actual human birth, and not the 
birth from a virgin, is shown by a spurious 
epistle, attributed to him, which not only imi- 
tates his style, but has caught his spirit, and 
may have been written by the middle of the third 
century or earlier. It is styled an Epistle to the 
Tarsians, and is combating later forms of heresy, 
such as the denial by some of the humanity of 
Christ (Patripassians and Sabellians), and by 
others of His divinity, asserting that He is mere 
man. Against all such he urges the true doc- 
trine of St. Paul : — 

"Mindful of him, do ye by all means 
know that Jesus, the Lord, was truly born of 
Mary, being made of a woman, and was as 
truly crucified. . . . And he really suffered 
and died and rose again." 



no FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



The testimony of Origen ^254) may also be 
added. He had learned of the Roman Creed, 
possibly during his visit in Italy, and had gath- 
ered its primary import to be the assertion of 
Christ's actual human birth, and His actual 
death : — 

"He assumed a body like to our own, 
differing in this respect only, that it was born 
of a Virgin and of the Holy Spirit ; that this 
Jesus Christ was truly born, and did truly 
suffer, and did not endure this death com- 
mon (to man) in appearance only, but did 
truly die/' etc. 1 

These passages show that the original purport 
of the clause — born of the Virgin Mary — was 
not primarily to assert the Virgin-birth but the 
actual human birth ; and that the name Virgin 
Mary is given for some other reason, either 
because it identified Christ with the house of 
David, from which Mary was supposed to be 
descended, and thus asserted His Messiahship; 
or, as in the case of Pontius Pilate for the pur- 
pose of identification and exactness, the name 
Virgin Mary having come to be the familiar 
designation of our Lord's mother. Although 



li( De Principiis," i, c. 3. 



INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIN-BIRTH in 

Ignatius had heard of the Virgin-birth, and 
twice refers to it, he did not attach to the vir- 
ginity of Mary any special importance, such as 
came to be attached to it in the fourth century, 
when the monastic spirit invading the Church 
was assigning to virginity a value beyond every 
other virtue, and some even were inclined to 
make it a condition of salvation. Thus there 
is a suggestive expression at the close of the 
epistle of Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans which 
reads: "I salute the families of my brethren, 
with their wives and children, and the virgins who 
are called widows" (kolItcLs napOevovsTas Xeyofxevas 
XVP a s)- It has been thought that such unusual 
language could be explained only on the 
ground that the virgins whom Ignatius speaks 
of as "called widows " were deaconesses, 
who in ecclesiastical order might have been 
grouped under the class of widows. Bishop 
Lightfoot after showing that this explanation 
is untenable gives his own explanation as 
follows : — 

"This then I suppose to be the meaning 
of the words: I salute those women, who 
though by name and in outward condition 
they are widows, I prefer to call virgins, 
for such they are in God's sight by their 



ii2 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 

purity and devotion/' (" Apostolic Fathers/' 
iv, 324.) 1 

That the original purport of the clause ''born 
of the Virgin Mary" was to assert the reality of 
Christ's birth, and not its unique or miraculous 
character, is further made evident by other fea- 
tures of the Creed. Originally an expansion 
of the baptismal formula, it had at first in view 
in its enlargements a thoroughgoing protest 
against Gnostic heresies. It proclaimed God, 
the almighty ruler of the universe, in opposition 
to the many rulers whom the Gnostics presented, 
who acted as a check on the Divine omnipo- 
tence. When this first article of the Creed was 
completed in accordance with its primary in- 
tent, we have the fuller exposition of the Church's 
faith in contrast with Gnostic aberrations: 
God, the " Father ," not an indescribable, ineffa- 
ble abyss of being; "Almighty ," not limited by 
conditions of matter which He could not control ; 

1 That a similar mode of thinking and of speaking was charac- 
teristic of the early Church so late as the third century is evident 
from its more influential writers, such as Tertullian, "De Exhort. 
Cast*.," i; "De Virg. VeL," c. 10; "ad Uxor.," c. 4; also Clem. 
Alex., " Strom. ," viii, 12: "Such are the Gnostic souls which the 
Gospels likened to the consecrated virgins who wait for their Lord. 
For they are virgins, in respect of their abstaining from what is 



INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIN-BIRTH 113 



"Maker of Heaven" in contrast with the vague 
conceptions of Gnosticism about an emanation 
of the heavens (pleroma) ; " and earth " whose 
origin the Gnostics with singular uniformity 
denied to have been the work of the supreme 
God. The emphasis on His "only Son our 
Lord " contradicts the Gnostic teaching of many 
supernatural beings in a graded order, of whom 
Christ was one, and the highest. Then comes 
the affirmation of His perfect humanity and His 
possession of a human body, which stood promi- 
nent among Gnostic negations, — He was "born" 
of a human mother, the Virgin Mary. The 
Gnostics denied that He was born; He emerged 
from the body of Mary in some way different 
from human parturition. They also denied 
that He suffered — He seemed to suffer; or that 
He actually died on the cross. Here the em- 
phasis of the Creed is intensified, "He suffered 
under Pontius Pilate, he was crucified, dead, and 
buried." Other clauses follow to assert the 
fact of the resurrection, which formed no part 
of Gnostic teaching. 

Gnosticism originated for the most part in 
Asia Minor, but its chief teachers gravitated to 
Rome, and the Church in Rome felt more 
heavily than was felt elsewhere the burden and 
the responsibility of resistance. Marcion, a 
1 



ii 4 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 

Gnostic teacher, who in some respects was more 
true to the Pauline doctrine, gave the Roman 
Church much trouble. Against his special teach- 
ing may have been levelled the clause which 
asserts the coming again of Christ to judgment: 
He shall come again to judge both the quick and 
dead/ 9 For judgment and condemnation were 
alien to Marcion's conception of the Divine 
goodness and love. 1 

Other parts of the Church met this dangerous 
invasion of Oriental religion in various ways. 
Irenaeus, in Gaul, wrote his treatise against 
heresies; Tertullian, in North Africa, produced 
controversial books against Marcion and the 
Valentinians ; while Clement of Alexandria and 
Origen sought by an appeal to the higher reason 
and by a more spiritual interpretation of the 
Christian faith to accomplish the same end. 
But Rome produced a creed whose formulas 
had long been in use, gathering them up into a 
composite whole. It was not done at once. 
The Roman Creed was a growth, and a slow 
one. Clauses continued to be inserted, and by 
the fourth century it was certainly fuller than it 
had been when we discern it in the middle of 

1 Cf. Dr. McGiffert's dissertation on "The Apostles' Creed " 
(N.Y., 1902, Charles Scribner's Sons), for an admirable state- 
ment of this view of the Creed as a protest against Gnosticism. 



INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIN-BIRTH 115 



the second century. Not until the eighth cen- 
tury had it taken on its final form as it is recited 
to-day. 

It does not cover the whole purport of this 
Creed to speak of it as a protest against Oriental 
religion. It does, indeed, include this purpose, 
nor can the Creed be understood without keep- 
ing this purpose in view. But when the stress 
of the conflict with Gnosticism was over, other 
objects of a rule of faith for catechumens came 
in view. On this point there are still differences 
of opinion, whether it was a baptismal creed 
recited as part of the baptismal vow, or a creed 
imparted to catechumens as part of their train- 
ing, or whether it was a compendium of the 
points in Christian belief on which the Church 
laid emphasis. 1 

Among the additions to the Creed, not in its 
earlier form, is the clause, "conceived by the Holy 
Ghost." When this addition was made, by the 
end of the second or the beginning of the third 
century, 2 the clause which follows was detached 
from the clauses which speak of the passion 
and death. Thus the Creed ultimately read, 

1 Cf. Kattenbusch, "Das Apostolische Symbol. ," i, 59 ff. 

2 Cf. McGiffert, pp. 91-92, for the evidence, which seems con- 
clusive. The same view is taken by Harnack, but is critised by 
Kattenbusch, Bd. ii, 619. 



n6 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



"conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Vir- 
gin Mary ; suffered under Pontius Pilate" etc., 
becoming a separate article. At this point we 
touch the most difficult question in the interpre- 
tation of the Creed. The various readings indi- 
cate that some difficulty was felt from an early 
period. In the old Roman Creed it ran at 
first, "who was born of the Holy Spirit, and 
Mary the Virgin" {qui natus est de Spiritu 
Sancto et Maria Virgine). In the Creed as 
known to St. Augustine, it was, "who was born 
through the Holy Spirit from Mary the Virgin" 
(qui natus est per Spiritum Sanctum ex Virgine 
Maria). Still another reading in an ancient 
creed of the fourth century, "qui natus est de 
Spiritu Sancto et ex Maria Virgine " In the 
fourth century conceptus was substituted for 
natus (359, council of Ariminum), and this 
change was adopted in the revision of the old 
Roman Creed in Gaul, and thence has come 
down to us in our so-called Apostles' Creed. 
Changes of meaning, which may seem slight, 
were involved in this use of prepositions, de or 
per or ex, or the simple conjunction et. They 
seem slight, but they involved no less an issue 
than the nature of the Incarnation; and the 
exact question at issue was, "What part in the 
transaction did Mary have ? Was she an equal 



INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIN-BIRTH 117 



partner with the Holy Spirit (et), or was her 
function a subordinate one, as the body is 
subordinate to the soul, the necessary, earthly 
agency for the human birth? — the work of 
the Incarnation being solely of God. 

St. Augustine felt the difficulty. In his 
" Enchiridion " he remarks: — 

"The puzzle is, in what sense it is said, 
'born of the Holy Ghost' when He [Christ] 
is in no sense the Son of the Holy Ghost. 
. . . When we make confession that Christ 
was born of the Holy Ghost and of the 
Virgin Mary, it is difficult to explain how it 
is that He is not the Son of the Holy Ghost 
and is the Son of the Virgin Mary when He 
was born both of Him and of her. It is 
clear beyond a doubt that He was not born 
of the Holy Spirit as His Father, in the 
same sense that he was born of the Virgin 
as His mother." ("Enchir.," 38. ) 

Augustine's answer is admirable, and covers 
more than one point in the doctrine of the 
Incarnation. The substance of his solution of 
the problem is that the Incarnation is a manifes- 
tation of the grace of God, by which grace Christ 
was purified from the womb by the Holy Spirit 



n8 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



in such a way as to leave no entrance for sin. 
The passage containing his answer is given in 
full, and will be referred to again. 

"As not every one who is called a son, was 
born of him whose son he is called, it is clear 
that this arrangement by which Christ was 
born of the Holy Spirit, but not as His Son, 
and of the Virgin Mary as her son, is in- 
tended as a manifestation of the grace of 
God. For it was by this grace that a man, 
without any antecedent merit, was at the 
very commencement of his existence as man, 
so united in one person with the Word of 
God, that the very person who was Son of 
man was at the very same time the Son 
of God, and the very person who was Son 
of God was at the same time Son of Man ; 
and in the adoption of his human nature 
into the divine, the grace itself became in 
a way so natural to the man, as to leave no 
room for the entrance of sin. Wherefore 
this grace is signified by the Holy Spirit; 
for He, though in his own nature God, may 
also be called the gift of God. And to ex- 
plain all this sufficiently, if indeed it could 
be done at all, would require a very length- 
ened discussion." (" Enchir.," 40.) 



INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIN-BIRTH 119 



From this discussion the conclusion is drawn 
that in reciting the Creed, the original sense may 
still be retained, as quite in harmony with the 
original design of the Creed, with Holy Scrip- 
ture, and with sound learning. The clause 
"born of the Virgin Mary" would then be con- 
nected with the clauses that follow — "suffered 
under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and 
buried" Taken thus together they assert the 
reality of the human birth of Christ, as if it 
read "born of a woman, the Virgin Mary/' and 
the reality also of His death and passion. "Con- 
ceived by the Holy Ghost" then stands as a 
distinct clause, as it also had a distinct and 
separate origin, 1 nor can any better interpreta- 
tion of this clause be found than that given 
above from St. Augustine. 

But there are difficulties connected with the 
clause, "conceived by the Holy Ghost" however 
we may interpret. It is the reminder of a cer- 
tain type of theology which was never developed 
in the ancient church, and never quite recon- 
ciled with the prevailing theology of the Eastern 
Church. If it is taken literally, and coupled 
with "born of the Virgin Mary" as forming 

1 The words conceptus est were not added until after the middle 
of the fourth century, finding their way into the creed of Southern 
Gaul, in the fifth and sixth centuries. Cf. McGifFert, p. 189. 



iio FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 

one article, it seems to indicate, as Augustine 
remarked, that Jesus had for His parents the 
Holy Spirit and Mary. Nor was it an unreal 
or fanciful possibility, against which Augustine 
was contending. There was danger at this 
point. 

Augustine held that the Incarnation was ac- 
complished by the influence of the Holy Spirit 
acting in and from the conception of Jesus, but 
acting also on the personality of Jesus through- 
out His life. He laid the stress upon the Divine 
activity, not upon the human contribution of 
Mary. So also Athanasius, who ranks with 
Augustine as the other of the two greatest Church 
fathers, asserts the Incarnation as the work of 
Deity alone. He differs, however, from Augus- 
tine, in that he does not attribute the Divine 
agency to the Holy Spirit, but to the Eternal Son 
Himself, the second distinction in the Godhead, 
who from His preexistent state came down and 
was made man. This thought of the preex- 
istence of Christ, to which no allusion is made 
in the Apostles' Creed, was uppermost in the 
consciousness of religious and theological teach- 
ers in the East, and is the badge of Eastern 
creeds as compared with Western. And so 
Athanasius speaks, as representing another way 
of looking at the Incarnation, when he says : — 



INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIN-BIRTH 121 

"For this purpose, then, the incorporeal 
and incorruptible and immaterial Word of 
God comes to our realm, howbeit He was not 
far from us before. For no part of creation 
is left void of Him : He has filled all things 
everywhere, remaining present with His 
own Father. But He comes in condescen- 
sion to show loving kindness upon us and 
to visit us. . . . He takes unto Himself a 
body and that of no different sort from 
ours. . . . Being Himself mighty, and Ar- 
tificer of everything, He prepares the body 
in the Virgin, as a temple unto Himself, and 
makes it His very own." ("De Incar.," 8.) 

"When He was descending to us, He 
fashioned His body for Himself from a 
Virgin, thus to afford to all no small proof 
of His Godhead, in that He who formed this 
is also Maker of everything else as well." 
("De Incar.," 17. Robertson's ed.) 

But not to dwell on this divergence, which 
would require too much space for its develop- 
ment, and is irrelevant here, it is to be noted 
that both Athanasius and Augustine, as men 
filled with the God consciousness, attribute the 
Incarnation to God alone; and the human 
agent, the Mother of Christ, stands in the back- 



122 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 

ground of their thought. But they lived at a 
time when changes were impending, were indeed 
already in process, and were revolutionizing the 
old Catholic Church, of the first three centuries, 
into the Church of the later Byzantine type, or 
in the West, of the Middle Ages. And the issue 
turned on the Virgin-birth. These two Church 
fathers stood on the dividing line; Athanasius 
died in 373 and Augustine in 430. Both felt 
some effect of the coming change. Athanasius 
uses language in speaking of Mary which an- 
ticipates the later usage, but the use was rare 
and exceptional, and may be taken as incidental. 
And Augustine, that stern man and most rigid 
of theologians, makes Mary an exception to the 
working of the all-prevailing law and curse of 
original sin. His opponent Pelagius would have 
exempted many others. In making the sole 
exception of Mary, Augustine seems to be 
governed rather by motives of courtesy and 
delicacy than of strict theology. His language 
has always been noted as somewhat peculiar. 
But even so, he more than once asserts that 
Mary was born in original sin. She was con- 
ceived in iniquity, for she sinned in Adam. But 
in the matter of actual transgression Augustine 
makes a concession in her favor. "Of the Holy 
Virgin Mary, of whom out of honor to the 



INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIN-BIRTH 123 



Lord, I wish no question to be made where sins 
are treated of, — for how do we know what mode 
of grace wholly to conquer sin may have been 
bestowed upon her who was found meet to con- 
ceive and bear Him of whom it is certain that 
He had no sin ? " 

The writers in the first three centuries who 
have most to say about the Virgin-birth belong 
to the Western, or Latin Church. Justin Martyr 
defends it against Trypho the Jew; with Justin 
also originated the famous comparison of Eve 
and Mary. He lived at Rome, and had come 
there from Asia Minor, and may have brought 
with him from thence a tendency to the exalta- 
tion of Mary. Justin was followed by Irenaeus, 
who had also felt the influence of Asia Minor 
and who expanded the famous illustration — 
how Eve had brought sin and Mary redemption 
to the world. The comparison was an unfortu- 
nate one, but it struck the popular imagination, 
and it was given greater vogue by Tertullian. 
That some difficulty was experienced in present- 
ing evidence for the Virgin-birth is seen in the 
great weight attached to the prophecy in Isaiah 
vii. 14. The Jews, who were familiar with 
Hebrew and with their own history, refused to 
accept it. Justin and Irenaeus and Tertullian 
and others rested upon it, despite the objections. 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



Origen recognized the difficulty; he had in- 
corporated in the parallel columns of his "Hex- 
apla" three Greek versions of the Old Testa- 
ment, which were intended as improvements 
on the Septuagint translation. These versions 
by Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, sub- 
stituted veavis for irap0a/os 9 making the fa- 
mous passage read "a young woman" instead 
of a "virgin." But when Origen was engaged 
in meeting the objections of Celsus, and among 
them the objection to the Virgin-birth, he re- 
marks on this passage: "Now if a Jew should 
split words and say that the words are not, 'Lo, 
a virgin/ but To, a young woman/ we reply 
that the word 'Olmah' — which the Septuagint 
have rendered by 'a virgin/ and others by 'a 
young woman' — occurs, as they say, in Deu- 
teronomy as applied to a virgin 93 1 (Deut. 
xxii, 23, 24). Other arguments were sought 
from the sphere of animal life, w 7 here cases of 
parthenogenesis were cited, 2 to show creative 
skill and power. Nor was it thought an un- 

1 "Contra Celsum," i, 36. 

2 The fable of the Phoenix was often used as an illustration. Cf. 
Rufinus, "Expos. Sym. Apost.," c. ii, who also mentions the case 
of bees. Cf. also Cyril of Jerusalem, who enlarges on the subject 
in his "Catechetical Lectures, " xii, 22 ff. ; but by his time the 
tendency to make the Virgin-birth an essential condition for the 
Incarnation was the most potent argument (pb. 386). 



INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIN-BIRTH 125 



worthy argument to remind the pagans how in 
their mythology, as well as in the case of some 
of their famous men, reputed instances of super- 
natural birth were not uncommon. On the 
whole it may be said that no additional evidence 
was alleged in confirmation of the narratives of 
Matthew and of Luke. There was another line 
of argument, but that remained yet to be worked 
out to its rigid conclusion, — that the Virgin- 
birth was essential to the Incarnation. There are 
hints of it, but it was not yet made prominent, 
as it was afterward to become. It is implied 
in the contrast between Eve and Mary. Ter- 
tullian, from whom so many germs of Latin 
theology proceed, was the first to rationalize on 
this point and to connect the Incarnation in dog- 
matic fashion with the Virgin-birth ("De Carne 
Christi," c. 18). 

On the other hand, in the Church of the East, 
with the exception of Asia Minor, no disposition 
was seen to urge the Virgin-birth as an essential 
content of the Christian faith. Clement of 
Alexandria makes no use of it, even in speaking 
of the birth of Christ, where the customary allu- 
sion would be in order. Origen builds up his 
argument for the Incarnation in his important 
treatise " On First Principles," without depend- 
ence on it. The Eastern Church attached more 



126 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



importance to the baptism of Christ than to His 
birth, to the moment when He began to teach 
and to preach the Kingdom of God. The best 
Eastern theologians were more under the in- 
fluence of the writer of the Fourth Gospel, where 
no reference is made to the Virgin-birth, but 
where the Incarnation is the central theme and 
the teaching of Christ is more amply illustrated 
than in the synoptics. In general, it may be said 
that the prologue of the Gospel according to 
St. John was preferred in the East; while in 
the Roman Church the preference was given to 
the prologues of Matthew and Luke. It is a 
striking circumstance that in the Creed of the 
Church in Jerusalem, down to the middle of 
the fourth century, no reference to the Virgin- 
birth is included. It was also absent from the 
Creed of the Church in Caesarea. But what is 
more striking still, is its absence from the Creed 
of the Council of Nicaea, which met for the pur- 
pose of determining the doctrine of the Incar- 
nation. It is not a question here, whether the 
fathers assembled at Nicaea accepted the Virgin- 
birth ; for any reason we know to the contrary 
they did accept it, but they did not include it in 
their Creed, from which the inference is they did 
not rest the doctrines of the Incarnation and the 
Trinity upon it. So late as 431 a.d., at the 



INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIN-BIRTH 127 



Third General Council, "the Synod gave order 
under pain of excommunication and deposition, 
that no other than the Nicene Creed . . . should 
be used." 1 The Nicene Creed, set forth at 
Nicaea in 325 a.d., ran as follows: — 

"We believe in one God, the Father Al- 
mighty, maker of all things both visible and 
invisible. 

"And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, begotten 
of the Father, only begotten, that is, of the 
substance of the Father, God out of God, 
Light out of Light, very God out of very 
God, begotten, not made, of the same sub- 
stance with the Father; by whom all things 
were made, both those in heaven and on the 
earth ; who for us men and for our salvation 
came down and was incarnate and was made 
man, and suffered and rose again the third 
day, and ascended into the heavens and will 
come to judge the living and the dead. 

"And in the Holy Spirit." 2 



1 Hefele, "History of the Councils," Eng. Tr., ii, 71. 

2 The anathemas appended to the Creed are omitted as having 
no bearing in this connection. 



CHAPTER V 



THE VIRGIN-BIRTH AND THE INCARNATION 
AFTER THE FOURTH CENTURY 

The Gospel of the Infancy in the Church of 
the first centuries and later contributed no im- 
portant motive to the conversion of the Roman 
Empire. So far as we know, it was generally 
received that Christ was born of the Virgin 
Mary; but no connection had yet been estab- 
lished between the circumstance of His birth 
and the doctrine of the Incarnation. There were 
some who denied His supernatural conception 
and birth. Thus Justin Martyr tells us there 
were those "who admit that He is Christ, while 
holding Him to be man of men; with whom I 
do not agree, nor would I, even though most of 
those who have the same opinions as myself 
should say so" ("Dial, cum Tryph.," 48). 
Cerinthus, the heretic, denied it, as did also the 
Ebionites. But the Gnostics for the most part 
accepted the Virgin-birth, they could make use 
of it in various ways to further their imaginative 
schemes; substituting "in" or "through" for 

128 



THE INCARNATION 



129 



"of " a virgin. The Arians also believed in the 
Virgin-birth, for it quite suited their denial of 
Christ's complete humanity. The Virgin-birth 
therefore was no badge of orthodoxy or test of 
Catholicity. 

But the main point is that it formed no vital 
part of the Church's message, as it had in the 
beginning no place in the apostolic preaching. 
The first sermons of Peter (Acts i. 15; ii. 14) 
omitted its mention, as also St. John and St. 
Paul were silent regarding it. The work of the 
apostles and of their successors was to present 
the mature Christ, the strong Christ, the man 
who had grown to perfection tested by tempta- 
tion (Heb. v. 8), the captain of our salvation who 
learned obedience by the things He suffered. It 
was not the infant in His mother's arms who 
made the effective appeal to the old Roman 
world. The ancient Catholic Church was think- 
ing of other things, preoccupied with the reality 
of God's existence and His control of the world, 
and with the mission of Christ to reveal the 
nature of God, and to establish His Kingdom in 
the world. Apologetic writers do not occupy 
themselves with defending the Virgin-birth; 
some allude to it, others do not, but all alike are 
supremely absorbed with the issues of the moral 
life which Christ embodied. In making Christ 

K 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



known to the men of their age, as a man among 
men, while yet the incarnation of God, they 
accomplished that mightiest of tasks, — the con- 
version of the Roman Empire. 

In the course of the fourth century a change 
set in — a change so great as to amount to a 
revolution when its results became finally ap- 
parent. There are many elements in the pro- 
cess which wrought this revolution which can- 
not be even alluded to here; only the barest 
outlines can be mentioned. To put the situa- 
tion in the largest, most general, way, the causes 
leading to the deterioration in Church life as 
well as in thought and in worship were the 
necessary evils involved in so great a victory 
as the Church had achieved, when, out of dire 
persecution, it emerged victorious and became 
the established religion of the empire under 
Constantine. A reaction immediately began 
against the worldliness wherein the Church 
was now involved, and more particularly 
a reaction from the vices which stained and 
defaced the pagan character. This led to the 
growing and ever more widely prevailing con- 
viction that celibacy (virginity) was the one 
highest virtue, constituting the angelic life, the 
imitation of God. The effect of the great 
Council of Nicaea, which had proclaimed the 



THE INCARNATION 



co-equality of Christ with the Father, induced a 
tendency to dwell more exclusively on the 
divinity of Christ than on His humanity. An 
able and distinguished bishop, Apollinaris of 
Laodicea, denied the complete humanity of 
Christ, holding that He possessed only a human 
body (a-w/xa with $vxv oiXoyos) and that the 
Divine mind had taken the place of the human 
mind or reason (6 vovs). He was condemned as 
a heretic (a.d. 381), but, as the subsequent 
history showed, He was not forgotten, His argu- 
ment carried weight, in reality He had only 
given expression to the tendency of His own 
and the following generations. His exact 
statement was avoided, but approximation was 
made to His teaching as far as words would 
allow. 

Under these circumstances the Virgin Mary 
came to the forefront in the popular mind and 
in the writings of professed theologians. She 
now became known in common parlance as 
the Mother of God {OeoroKoq) and as "ever 
Virgin/' 1 It became a matter of faith to main- 

1 For the definition of the phrase "ever Virgin" (aenrapOivos: 
semper virgo), which the Greek and Roman churches invariably 
add as a gloss to the clause in the Creed, "born of the Virgin 
Mary," cf. Augustine, "Ep. (137) ad Volus.," c. 8 : "The body of 
the infant Jesus was brought forth from the womb of His mother, 
still a virgin, by the same power which afterwards introduced His 



i 3 2 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 

tain that she had no other children, reversing 
the opinion of the earlier Church, thenceforth 
designated as the Helvidian heresy. The Vir- 
gin-birth passed from an incident into a sacro- 
sanct doctrine, to be held as essentially related 
to the doctrines of the Incarnation and the 
Trinity, and without which they could not be 
maintained. 

But all this could not have been apart 
from the strange concurrence with that feature 
of old heathen religion, which shows peoples 
as yearning after female deities. The worship 
of Isis, w T hich had achieved wide popularity in 
the empire, was now transferred to Mary, and 
the transition of the heathens into the Church 
became easy and natural. Other female deities 
there were, popular in the East, — Demeter, 
Ceres, or great Diana of the Ephesians, — 
and from these the worship now fell away 
to a better, more attractive substitute. Mary 
was now supplanting her Son; the Father 
and the Son retreat into the background of 
the people's consciousness; Mary reigns as 

body, when He was a man, through the closed doors into the upper 
chamber. " How rigidly Augustine connected this notion of the 
virginity in partu with the clause in the Creed, "born of the Virgin 
Mary 7 ," is evident from "Enchir.," c. 34, and also is it evident 
how wide his departure from the original sense of the Creed. 



THE INCARNATION 



l 33 



the Queen of heaven; the great truth of 
the fatherhood of God, which Christ pro- 
claimed as the mission of His life, became 
inoperative. 

Asia Minor seems to have been the place where 
the transition was accomplished. It was a 
famous workshop of religions, from whence the 
influence spread into other countries. Here, as 
is probable, the materials were worked over, of 
which other lands contributed the germs. From 
the Western Church was imported into the East 
the festival of the birth of Christ (360-386 a.d.) 
on the twenty-fifth of December. How early 
it was observed in the West is not known, the 
first allusion to it being as late as 336 a.d. 1 
Another contemporaneous change was the com- 
bination or fusion of what was characteristic 
of the Roman Creed (Apostles') with the essen- 
tial features of the Creed of Nicaea. Under 
what circumstances this notable result was 
accomplished is still a question which needs 
elucidation, 2 but the fact remains that the Creed 

1 Cf. Duchesne, "Origines du Culte Chretienne," pp. 247 ff. 
Augustine does not mention Christmas among the festivals uni- 
versally observed on the authority of the apostles or plenary 
councils — "the Lord's passion, resurrection and ascension, and 
the descent of the Holy Spirit from heaven, " Ep. 54 (400 a.d.). 

2 Cf. Swainson, "The Nicene and Apostles' Creeds," pp. 85 ff. 
and 155 ff. See also Hort, "Two Dissertations" on the creeds. 



134 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



now designated and recited as the Nicene Creed 
was probably the work of Epiphanius, in whose 
treatise, "The Anchored One" (c. 374 a.d.), it 
first appears. Cyril, the bishop of Jerusalem, 
who was suspected of heresy, presented this 
Creed to the so-called second General Council 
in 381 a.d., and on the ground of this con- 
fession was acquitted. This new creed grew in 
popular use, till it supplanted the Nicene 
Creed ; and it gained the approval of the Council 
of Chalcedon (451 a.d.), under the misapprehen- 
sion that it was the work of the Council of 
Constantinople. The new Creed, as Dr. Hort 
has remarked, had "sung itself " into the heart 
of the Church, before it received conciliar sanc- 
tion. From the East it travelled back into the 
West and supplanted for generations the old 
Roman (Apostles') Creed. 

These facts are mentioned here because of 
their relation to the process going on in Asia 
Minor during the fourth century, which was 
revolutionizing the thought and belief of the 
Church. Germs, when they are transplanted, 
may change their character or gain a new vitality. 
Enough remains in the way of literary debris 
to show the process of the transformation. 
Thus, for example, the pseudo Ignatius (c. 340 
a.d.), revised the Ignatian Epistles, and brought 



THE INCARNATION 



*35 



it up to date as a text-book. Wherever the 
genuine Ignatius had mentioned Mary, as he 
was wont to do without the title Virgin, that 
designation was inserted, and generally, where- 
ever she was mentioned in the original, or the 
birth of Christ, there was expansion on the Vir- 
gin-birth, whether Ignatius had mentioned it or 
not. The error into which Ignatius had fallen 
when he saluted "the virgins who are called 
widows/' was corrected to read, "those that 
are ever virgins and the widows." 

The air was full of forgeries. As the interest 
in Mary grew, information was needed about 
her life which the Gospels did not give, and, 
indeed, regarding her they are most reticent. 
But the information for which the age was crav- 
ing was forthcoming in abundance. The story 
was given of her father and mother (Joachim 
and Anna), of her own miraculous birth, and 
her sinless purity, and many details of her 
betrothal; the birth of Jesus was magnified by 
many incidents, and the lack of knowledge about 
His early years was supplemented with miracu- 
lous events. No check was placed on the imagi- 
nation as it now unfolded to the wondering world 
the Gospel of the Infancy. What impressed the 
imagination most was the contrast to which 
words were unequal, of the infant Jesus in His 



136 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



mother's arms, carrying on the superintendence 
and control of the universe. 1 

We are now a long way from the original pur- 
pose of the old Roman Creed, in its simple 
affirmation that Christ was born, and of the 
Virgin Mary. The first step in the process of 
departure followed in consequence of the ad- 
dition of the clause, "conceived by the Holy 
Ghost." The miraculous conception was then 
interpreted as implying the miraculous birth, 
which meant that He was not actually born by 
the mode of human birth, but in some super- 
natural way, with the inevitable inference to 
follow, that His body was not in all respects like 
a human body, and that His flesh had some super- 
natural and life-giving quality. Another infer- 
ence next read into the Creed carries us still 
further from the reality and historicity of His 
earthly life. It began to be asserted that in 
the Incarnation, the Word, or Eternal Son, did 
not unite with an individual man, but with 

1 Cf. article in "Diet. Chris. Biog." on "Gospels Apocryphal," 
by Lipsius, for a description of these writings, influential in the 
Church despite their origin. The Roman dogma of the Immacu- 
late Conception of Mary is derived from this source. For the in- 
fluence of the " Protevangelium ,, of James and kindred writings 
upon the most eminent Church fathers, cf. Ambrose, "De Virgini- 
tate," ii, 2, who draws the portrait of Mary with many details, 
as to her character, her mode of life, etc., from these sources. 



THE INCARNATION 



*37 



humanity. Christ it was said was not "a man" 
but "man." This was practically equivalent, 
however strenuously it might be denied, to the 
Apollinarian opinion, that Christ was not a com- 
plete or perfect man. For "man" without in- 
dividuality may answer for a theological 
abstraction, but is inconceivable in the concrete 
world of human life. 

It is too large a question to be discussed here, 
whether the usage of the earlier Church in 
any approved writer sanctioned this view of 
the imperfect humanity of Christ. It probably 
arose as a way of thinking in the Eastern 
Church during or after the fourth century. At 
any rate we have the testimony of Augustine 
(1*430) to the thought and mode of expression 
in the West, to which all the more importance 
attaches, because of his influence, and also 
because he was sensitive to his reputation for 
orthodoxy. No one would have known sooner 
than he, if any change were impending in theo- 
logical circles on so vital a point. But Augus- 
tine spoke of Christ as an individual man in 
organic union with the Godhead. He did so 
in the "Confessions," and more dogmatically in 
his treatise on the Creed. It is sometimes said 
that Augustine's doctrine of predestination in- 
fluenced his manner of speaking on this feature 



138 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



of the Incarnation; but, however that may be, 
he was not the man to go counter to what he 
knew to be the prevailing mode of speech, or 
even apprehended might become such. After 
having maintained, then, that Christ is the only 
Son of God, and that He is both God and man, 
Augustine proceeds : — 

"Now here the grace of God is displayed 
with the greatest power and clearness. 
For what merit had the human nature in 
the man Christ earned, that it should in this 
unparalleled way be taken up into the unity 
of the person of the only Son of God ? What 
goodness of will, what goodness of desire 
and intention, what good works had gone 
before, which made this man worthy to be- 
come one person with God ? Had he been a 
man previously to this and had He earned 
this unprecedented reward, that He should 
be thought worthy to become God ? Assur- 
edly nay: from the very moment that He 
began to be man, He was nothing else than 
the Son of God, the only Son of God, the 
Word who was made flesh, and therefore 
He was God ; so that just as each individual 
man unites in one person a body and a 
rational soul, so Christ in one person unites 



THE INCARNATION 



139 



the Word and man. Now wherefore was 
this unheard-of glory conferred on human 
nature, a glory which, as there was no ante- 
cedent merit, was of course wholly of grace — 
except that here those who looked at the 
matter soberly and honestly might behold a 
clear manifestation of the power of God's 
grace, and might understand that they are 
justified from their sins by the same grace, 
which made the man Christ Jesus free from 
the possibility of sin ?" 1 

Augustine's doctrine of the Incarnation, which 
had represented an important tendency of the 
Latin Church, soon after came to be regarded in 
the Eastern Church, and especially from the 
point of view of Cyril of Alexandria, as the rank- 
est heresy. No words, however bitter or scurril- 
ous, were deemed too strong for its condemna- 
tion, when it was reproduced, in substance, by 

1 "Enchir.," c. 36, also c. 40, cited ante, p. 73. Cf. also " Con- 
fess, vii, 19, and "De Correp. et Grat.," c. 30. The exposition 
of the attitude of Augustine cannot be attempted here, but it may- 
be said that it involves the question whether the personality of an 
individual man is capable of growth and expansion under the in- 
fluence of the Holy Spirit till it includes the universal range of 
human experience, and so becomes the equivalent of humanity in 
itself and as a whole. The point is discussed in Slattery's "The 
Master of the World," pp. 275 fF., and by Briggs, North Am. Rev., 
June, 1906. 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



the Antiochian school in the East. But the op- 
posite view, the doctrine of the incomplete hu- 
manity, the denial of individuality to the human 
nature of Christ, cannot be said to have gained 
the sanction of General Councils. Certainly the 
Council of Chalcedon did not teach it, nor does 
anything in its acts necessarily warrant the in- 
ference that Christ was "man," and not "a 
man/' or that individuality did not of necessity 
inhere in His human nature. The decision of 
Chalcedon was that in Christ there were two 
natures and one person. Beyond that the 
council did not go. But others did go beyond 
this statement, reading into it what it did not 
originally contain. For the Council of Chalce- 
don, in which the influence of the Western 
Church was strong, had rendered a decision not 
acceptable to the Church as a w r hole in the East. 
It had also, while adopting the Western view of 
the Incarnation, neutralized it to some extent in 
approving the term "Mother of God" (0eoro#cos) 
as the designation of Mary. 

It therefore became necessary in the East to 
work over the decision of Chalcedon, in order to 
bring it into harmony with the prevailing popu- 
lar theology. This w r as done first by Leontius 
of Byzantium (c. 485-543 a.d.). What New- 
man undertook to do for the Articles of the 



THE INCARNATION 141 

Anglican Church, in the nineteenth century, 
Leontius accomplished in the sixth century for 
the decrees of Chalcedon, giving them a sense 
which reversed their original purport, and by 
means of which he accommodated himself to 
their statements. "He was the first definitely 
to maintain that the human nature of Christ 
has its personality in the Logos/' 1 "A devout 
disciple of Apollinaris," says Harnack, "might 
properly have said, in reference to the phrase of 
Leontius, 'the personality of the human nature 
is in the Logos' {viroo-Trjvai lv rep \6ycp), that 
Apollinaris said about the same thing, but said 
it in plainer words." 2 

From this time, and in consequence of this 
view of the Person of Christ, no further interest 

1 Cf. Harnack, " Dogmengesch.," ii, 383 fF., Eng. tr., v. 232 ff. 
Also Loofs, "Leitfaden," 175, 185. 

2 See ante, p. 131. The consequence of the doctrine of the 
impersonality of the human nature — a doctrine, says Dorner, 
" sanctioned by no (Ecumenical Council " — is this, "Instead of our 
seeing God in Christ, who is also the veritable Son of man, full of 
grace and truth, the humanity of Christ must, logically, be lowered 
to the position of a mere selfless opyavov of God, or even 
to that of a mere temple or garment. " It was a further conse- 
quence, that the Church "made such a use of the doctrine of the 
impersonality of the human nature, that the tendency toward the 
magical view of the operations of grace and toward transubstan- 
tiation, which was characteristic of the Middle Ages, found ever 
increased satisfaction. " Dorner, "Person of Christ/' vol. iii, 
pp. 116, 119. 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



was felt in the study of the life of Christ, nor any 
effort made to get deeper insight into His con- 
sciousness, or His teaching. "The Exposition 
of the Orthodox Faith/' by John of Damascus 
(754-787), is an illustration of the mechanical 
method of dealing with the life of Jesus, after 
separating Him from humanity and nullifying His 
human nature, no matter how strongly in mere 
formulas that humanity may be asserted. Nor is 
there any hope for the Orthodox Church of the 
East so long as the Damascene remains its most 
authoritative theologian. Since Christ, as the 
Damascene affirms, "is not an individual," 
and since the Incarnation was complete from the 
moment of His conception, actual growth in 
"wisdom" or "in favor with God and man" 
cannot be predicated without qualification. " He 
receives no addition to these attributes," but 
rather manifests, as the occasion demands, the 
wisdom already possessed, adapting it to the 
moment as the years increase, and simulating 
these for human growth ("Expos.," 32). The 
Gospel narrative tells us that He feared, and 
these are His own words, "Now is my soul 
troubled." John admits the fear was real, and 
not apparent, but 66 now means just when He 
willed" to be troubled ("Expos.," 23). He 
prayed, but not because He felt any "need of 



THE INCARNATION 



H3 



uprising toward God," but because it was the 
action appropriate to the moment, and in order 
to become an example to us. And so when He 
said, Father, if it be possible let this cup pass 
from me ; yet, not as I will but as thou wilt, "Is it 
not clear to all," so runs the comment, "that He 
said this as a lesson to us to ask help in our trials 
only from God, and to prefer God's will to 
our own, and as a proof that He did actually 
appropriate to Himself the attributes of our 
nature?" (34, 35). 1 

The view of the Incarnation maintained by 
John of Damascus met with clear-sighted op- 
position for the first time in the teaching of 
Luther, who, according to Dorner, 

"insisted on the reality of the humanity of 
Christ, even in the matter of growth. He 
earnestly and distinctly repudiates all those 
mythical elements which the legends of the 
Church had introduced into the life of the 
child Jesus. Not merely as to the physical, 
but also as to the spiritual aspects of Christ's 

1 Cf. Dorner, "Person of Christ," iii, 205 ff., for a critical 
study and estimate of John of Damascus. His " Exposition" was 
translated into Latin, and from its use by Peter the Lombard, his 
teaching on the Incarnation passed over into scholastic mediaeval 
theology and held its own until the Reformation brought a change, 
and Augustine came again to his own. 



144 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



humanity, does he maintain that He under- 
went an actual development. He was in all 
respects like other children, with the single 
exception of sin. Though he decidedly 
represents the life of Jesus as at once divine 
and human from the very commencement, 
he is equally sincere in teaching that He 
increased, as in years, so also in wisdom and 
in favor with God and men. His humanity 
was not omniscient but was under the ne- 
cessity of learning, though perhaps not from 
men. Although the Spirit did dwell in Him 
from the beginning, but as His body grew, 
and His reason grew in a natural way like 
that of other men, so did the Spirit penetrate 
into and pervade Him even more fully and 
moved Him the longer the more. It is, 
therefore, no pretence when Luke says : He 
became strong in the Spirit. The older He 
grew, the greater He grew; the greater, 
the more rational; the more rational, the 
stronger in Spirit and the fuller of wisdom 
before God, in Himself, and before the 
people. These words need no gloss. Such 
a view too is attended with no danger, and is 
Christian ; whether it contradicts the articles 
of faith invented by them or not, is of no 
consequence. Although Jesus continued 



THE INCARNATION 



H5 



invariably obedient, He was, notwithstand- 
ing, compelled to learn obedience. The tra- 
ditional expedient of saying that Christ 
merely played our part, Luther refused to 
employ/' 1 

It may not be inappropriate to introduce here 
a similar representative utterance of Anglican 
theology. It is taken from a sermon by the 
late Archer Butler, on the text, "If any man will 
come after me, let him deny himself and take 
up his cross and follow me " ; and it is chosen 
for citation here because of its beautiful and 
felicitous expression of a great truth : — 

"I speak then of the daily self-denial of 
the Son of God which is here set forth as 
the model of ours, for it is only as we under- 
stand the model that we can expect to under- 
stand the copy. ... I bring before you this 
divine person visiting the regions of pain in 
such a sense as to be our example ; for so 
the text represents Him. I exhibit Him, as 
it does, suffering as He would have us suffer, 
suffering, therefore, that He may accomplish 
a refining and exalting change upon Himself; 

1 Cf. Dorner, "Person of Christ/' Eng. tr., div. ii, vol. ii, pp. 
91 ff., from whose presentation the above is slightly abridged. 



146 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



not then upon Himself simply as God, for as 
such change and exaltation are alike impos- 
sible, but upon Himself as man, and, there- 
fore, susceptible of all the improvement 
which the original principles of that part of 
the creation will allow. It is of the fiery 
trial I would speak, through which He bore 
our nature, till He had, Himself the sufferer, 
made it fit to be the shrine of a God, the 
temple in which He has chosen to dwell for 
everlasting. Christ the Atoner we acknowl- 
edge and adore ; but it is before Christ the 
Purifier we bend to-day. 

"That this purifying purpose in the suf- 
ferings of Christ is recognized in the Scrip- 
tural accounts of His redemption of our race, 
I suppose I need not remind you. The "re- 
finer's fire' was itself refined; Himself He 
perfected to perfect us. He is everywhere 
described as being ever tempted, just as we 
are, though ever victorious, as — alas ! — we 
are not; nor can we doubt the disciplinary 
character of this constant and painful 
struggle, when we are told that, 'though a 
Son, He learned obedience by the things 
which He suffered/ that He was 'made per- 
fect through sufferings/ and by that means 
' became the author of eternal salvation to 



THE INCARNATION 



all them that obey Him/ Everywhere His 
trial is made accurately to answer to our 
own. Nor surely can we, with any reason, 
doubt that its result upon His own human- 
ity must have been similar to that which we 
know the same processes produce, and are in- 
tended to produce, among ourselves. We find 
Him immersed in the same difficulties, sup- 
ported by the same faith, acting in view of 
the same reward, 'in all things made like 
unto His brethren'; and we know that His 
human nature was capable of the natural 
course of advancement, that He could 
6 grow in wisdom/ and in years; we may 
well believe that even in Christ Himself 
those vigils of prayer so often recorded, those 
weary wanderings, those patient ' endurances 
of contradictions/ the agonies of the garden, 
the final struggle of the cross, had power to 
raise and refine the human element of His 
being beyond the simple purity of its original 
innocence; that though ever and equally 
' without sin/ the dying Christ was some- 
thing more consummate still than the Christ 
baptized in Jordan." 1 



1 "Sermons," First Series, Philadelphia, 1856, 57-58. The 
publication of these sermons was an event, both in England and 
America. The lamented author, a divine of the Church of Eng- 



148 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



This quotation does not exhaust the argu- 
ment. The writer goes on to say that the prin- 
ciple at issue in the Incarnation is that virtue 
tried and triumphant ranks above innocence. 
If Christ were to possess the utmost perfection 
of our nature in the humanity allied to His God- 
head, He must possess it in the state of victorious 
trial. Such a state might have been wrought by 
some sudden and supernatural illapse of grace. 
"But such a perfection thus struck out at a beat 
by the instantaneous omnipotence of miracle, 
would have formed a manhood so utterly re- 
moved from our own, that it would have neu- 
tralized nearly every discernible purpose of 
Him, who in the fulness of an all-pervading 
sympathy with man as such, 'took not on Him 
the nature of angels but the seed of Abraham/" 
Nor is it "any more a derogation to the dignity 
of Christ to suppose him capable of moral ad- 
vancement/' or that "as a man he should have 
been capable of improvement," than it is to hold 
that "as a man He should not be infinite." 1 

But it was just this view of the person of Christ 
which John of Damascus held in abhorrence, 

land, died at the age of thirty-three. At the time of his death he 
was professor of philosophy in the University of Dublin. After 
his death was published his "Lectures on Ancient Philosophy." 
1 "Sermons," iii, 58, 59. 



THE INCARNATION 



149 



and for which he reserved his strongest epithets 
of condemnation. To his mind it undid the 
Incarnation; it was an insult to Christ, for He 
was not "a man" nor an " individual man"; 
and by the instantaneous omnipotence of a 
miracle in the womb of the Virgin, He had been 
made pure and stainless and His moral perfec- 
tion was complete from His birth. 

The word which includes and sums up the 
doctrine of John of Damascus, is Ocotokos, 
"the Mother of God" as applied to Mary. 
About that word the whole long controversy 
turned in the ancient Church, from the fifth to 
the end of the seventh century, until the weary 
struggle was over. Its use originated in the 
East, in the fourth century, and it stimulated, as 
well as justified, the worship of Mary, whatever 
may have been its source. The word was un- 
heard of in the first three centuries. Nor did 
the Western or Latin Church take kindly to it 
at first. In commenting on the actual birth 
of Christ, in connection with the words, 
"Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine 
hour is not yet come," Augustine remarks : — 

"He rather admonishes us to understand 
that, in respect of His being God, there was no 
mother for Him, the part of whose personal 



150 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 

majesty He was preparing to show forth in 
the turning of water into wine. But as re- 
gards being crucified, He was crucified in 
respect of His being man, and that was the 
hour which had not come as yet, at the time 
w 7 hen this word was spoken, 'What have I 
to do with thee ? Mine hour is not yet come ' ; 
that is, the hour at which I shall recognize 
thee. For at that period, when He was cru- 
cified as man, He recognized his human 
mother and committed her most humanely 
to the care of the best-beloved disciple. " 

Pope Celestine (f 432) first used the word 0eo- 
tokos in the West, during the Pelagian controversy. 
Leo the Great (f 461) used it, but sparingly. 
In his time the fierce controversy had begun in 
the course of which 0€ot6ko<; was sanctioned 
as the highest and final test of orthodoxy. 
That controversy had been precipitated by Nes- 
torius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, who did 
not realize that the word stood not only for a 
theory of the Incarnation, but also expressed the 
ground for the worship of Mary as the highest 
of all celestial beings, who stood close to the 
throne of the Eternal Trinity. His rejection of 
the term " Mother of God" produced, says Soc- 
rates, the historian, "a discussion which agitated 



THE INCARNATION 



the whole Church, resembling the struggle of 
combatants in the dark, all parties uttering the 
most confused and contradictory assertions." 1 
When the Council of Ephesus (431 a.d.) gave its 
approval to the word Oeoroicos, the great crowd 
of people filling the city "burst forth into ex- 
clamations of joy, and escorted the judges who 
had deposed and excommunicated Nestorius 
with torches and incense to their homes, cele- 
brating the occasion by a general illumination." 

1 By Nestorianism is generally understood such a separation of 
the two natures in Christ as to amount virtually to a double per- 
sonality. At the time of the controversy he was charged with 
denying the divinity of Christ. On this point the words of a con- 
temporary, Socrates, the ecclesiastical historian, are worthy of 
being recalled: "Then indeed the discussion which agitated the 
whole Church resembled the struggle of combatants in the dark, 
all parties uttering the most confused and contradictory assertions. 
The general impression was that Nestorius was tinctured with the 
errors of Paul of Samosata and Photinus, and was desirous of 
foisting on the Church the blasphemous dogma that the Lord was 
a mere man; and so great a clamor was raised by the contention 
that it was deemed requisite to convene a general council to take 
cognizance of the matter in dispute. Having myself perused the 
writings of Nestorius, I shall candidly express the conviction of my 
own mind concerning him; and as, in entire freedom from per- 
sonal antipathies, I have already alluded to his faults, I shall in 
like manner be unbiassed by the criminations of his adversaries 
to derogate from his merits. I cannot then concede that he was 
either a follower of the heretics with whom he was classed, or that 
he denied the Divinity of Christ : but he seemed scared at the term 
theotokos, as though it were some terrible phantom." (" H. E.," 
vii, 32.) 



152 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 

There is an ancient " Oration, concerning 
Simeon and Anna/' wrongly attributed to Me- 
thodius, whose exact date is unknown, but it 
expresses the mood of the hour, when, after the 
victory of Ephesus, Mary was enthroned as a 
deity to be worshipped. 

"What shall I say to thee, O mother virgin 
and virgin-mother. For the praise even of 
her, who is not man's work, exceeds the 
power of man. . . . Receive, O Lady 
most benignant, gifts precious, and such as 
are fitted to thee alone, O thou who art ex- 
alted above all generations, and who among 
all created things both visible and invisible 
shinest forth as the most honorable. . . . 
God is in the midst of thee, and thou shalt 
not be moved, for the Most High hath made 
holy the place of His tabernacle. ... By 
thee the Lord hath appeared, the God of 
hosts with us. . . . Blessed of the Lord 
is thy name, full of divine grace, and grateful 
exceedingly to God, mother of God, thou 
that givest light to the faithful, . . . the 
mother of the Creator, . . . the upholder of 
Him who upholds all things by His word 
. . . the spotless robe of Him who clothes 
Himself with light as with a garment. Thou 



THE INCARNATION 



x 53 



hast lent to God, who stands in need of 
nothing, that flesh which he had not, in or- 
der that the omnipotent might become that 
which it was His good pleasure to be. What 
is more splendid than this ? What than this 
is more sublime ? He who fills earth and 
heaven, whose are all things, has become 
in need of thee, for thou hast lent to God 
that flesh which He had not. Thou hast 
clad the mighty one with that beauteous 
panoply of the body, by which it has become 
possible for Him to be seen by mine eyes. 
Hail ! Hail ! Mother and handmaid of God. 
Hail ! Hail ! thou to whom the great Creator 
of all is a debtor," etc. 1 

In the " Dialogues" of Theodoret (f 457), 
— the " Blessed" Theodoret, as his title runs, — 
bishop of Cyrus, may be found the argument 

1 Among the prayers offered to the Virgin Mary, these are cited 
in the writings of the English Reformers, as involving blasphemy : — 

"Our hope and trust are put in thee, O Virgin Mary; defend us 
everlastingly." 

"O happy mother which dost purge us from our sins." 

"Thou art the mediator between God and Man, the advocate 
of the poor, the refuge of all sinners." 

"Thou art the Lady of Angels. Thou art the Queen of Heaven. 
Command thy Son. Show thyself to be a mother. He is thy Son; 
thou art His mother; the mother may command; the child must 
obey." 

"Come unto her all ye that travail and are heavy laden." 



i 5 4 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



of a great thinker, who disputed the term 
"Mother of God" as defective and inaccurate, 
and dangerous, since it suppressed the humanity 
of Christ, and gave one-sided expression to His 
divinity. But it was for just that reason, that 
the term was welcome. It made the humanity 
illusory and unreal, in order to establish the 
unity of the personality. The humanity was 
absorbed in the divinity. All that remained 
of the humanity was the pneumatic flesh, the 
garb of deity, the flesh with its life-giving power, 
which Mary contributed. It is not without a 
sense of pathos one reads the protest of The- 
odoret, now that fifteen centuries have gone by 
since he wrote. The tide was against him; 
his protest was in vain. What Newman wrote, 
when he became aware that the doctrine of papal 
infallibility would be decreed, we may take as 
the language Theodoret might have used as he 
witnessed the revolution in the ancient Church. 
"If it is God's will that the phrase 'Mother of 
God' shall be confirmed, then it is God's will 
to throw back the times and moments of that 
triumph which He has destined for His King- 
dom, and I shall feel I have but to bow my head 
to His adorable, inscrutable Providence." 

Most inscrutable was the Providence brood- 
ing over that ancient Eastern world while these 



THE INCARNATION 



155 



things were transacting. Heroic efforts had 
not been wanting, and many sacrifices had been 
made to overcome the tendency which was dis- 
sipating the humanity of Christ into an illusory 
dream, and these efforts may not have been 
wholly in vain, for future ages, even though at 
the time they were futile. Nothing could stem 
the tide which was sweeping over the imagina- 
tion of the people and carrying the Church to 
the enthusiastic worship of the Mother of God. 
The strength of a people lies in its consciousness 
of God ; and just in proportion as it knows God 
and worships Him is a people strong. But God 
was disappearing from the thought and life. 
And Christ also, the strong Christ of the Gos- 
pels, the leader of humanity, who had come to 
reveal God, He had been reduced to an in- 
fant in His mother's arms, and it was the Christ- 
child who could appeal to His mother's love 
and sympathy, which also appealed to the de- 
teriorating religious instincts of the age. When 
the Providence of God was fully revealed, it 
broke upon the world in the invasion of the Sar- 
acens, who easily took possession of the territory 
of the Eastern Church. Asia Minor, nursing 
mother of so many religions, where the cult of 
the Virgin Mary had also found most fertile 
soil, succumbed to the invasion of the followers 



156 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



of the prophet, whose war-cry and religion were 
the same, "There is one God." That had been 
also the original war-cry of the Christian Church 
as it entered the Roman Empire to begin its 
unparalleled career of conquest. Turn to the 
Christian apologists of the age before Constan- 
tine for the impressive contrast. Very little 
had they to say about the Virgin-birth and 
nothing about the Mother of God. They were 
preoccupied with God the Father, the Being 
spiritual and invisible, whose providence over 
all the world was most real and powerful, and 
extended to each individual man, who ruled the 
world in righteousness and was calling it to 
judgment. This conviction of God had been 
raised to the highest degree of motive power 
by the coming of Christ, His only Son our Lord, 
and it was not the glories of Mary, nor the 
winning arts of the Christ-child that broke the 
power of the Roman Empire, but the strong Lord 
Christ, whom the apologists drew as a real man, 
in the historic reality of his earthly life. God 
was then in Christ reconciling the world unto 
Himself and fulfilling the promise and potency 
of the Incarnation. But w 7 hen the Eastern 
Church entered on the way of decline and 
degeneracy — it was about the middle of the fifth 
century that the decline began to be apparent, 



I 



THE INCARNATION 



*57 



which is also the date of the great Council of 
Chalcedon — then it is not God they are talking 
and thinking about, but the relation of Christ 
to Mary, and how the Virgin-birth is related to 
Christ's divinity and to the salvation of man- 
kind. In the earlier age when the Church was 
winning its stupendous victory over the Roman 
Empire, the divinity of Christ and his Godhood 
had been set forth as most manifest in His life 
and character, His deeds, His words. In the 
age that followed, of decline and weakness, His 
divinity had come to be dependent on the exact 
nature of the incident of His birth. In the ear- 
lier period they were fighting to the death the 
corrupt mythology of the old world, which 
concealed God or denied Him. In the later age 
the mythological tendency revived, with the 
Virgin-mother for its centre, and God was 
smothered in the mazy labyrinth where the 
consciousness of the Church was wandering. 

How was it in Western or Latin Christendom ? 
We cannot tell what Augustine might have done, 
had he lived to confront the Council of Ephesus 
or the Council of Chalcedon, as they gave their 
sanction to the expression "Mother of God," 
wherein was wrapped up, as in a germ, that 
theory of the Incarnation which he rejected. He 
was taken away from the evil to come. The 



158 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



West was fast sinking into barbarism, in the 
year 430 when he died, and in that very year 
the Vandals were knocking for entrance at the 
gates of Hippo. It was no longer a time for 
theologizing. Dialectic gave way to organiza- 
tion and to action. No one arose after him who 
was his equal in the West. He was read and 
studied, and his name carried great influence 
both in the earlier and later Middle Ages. But 
so far as the doctrine of the Incarnation and the 
Eucharist were concerned, Western theologians 
followed other lights. They finally yielded to 
the prestige of the East on these issues, and not 
Augustine, but John of Damascus became their 
teacher. They were aware as they made their 
departure in this direction that Augustine 
no longer served them. When his name and 
authority were appealed to in behalf of doctrines 
the Church was rejecting, the answer was made 
that "the holy doctor of Hippo, fatigued by the 
labors of composition, had not always made his 
thought sufficiently clear ; and thus was explained 
how, for the ignorant, he was a source of error ; 
but if, what was impossible should be the 
case, he had erred upon so great a mystery, it 
would be, indeed, an occasion for repeating the 
words of St. Paul, 'If an angel from heaven 
preach any other Gospel unto you than that 



THE INCARNATION 



159 



which we have preached unto you, let him be 
accursed/" 1 So John of Damascus superseded 
Augustine on the Incarnation, as Dionysius the 
Areopagite on the doctrine of the Eucharist. 
The Eastern, or Oriental, interpretation of the 
Christian mysteries dominated the West. From 
the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the worship 
of the Virgin-mother made rapid strides. Al- 
ready indeed the Latin Church was adding 
another element to the Marian mythology, — 
the immaculate conception of Mary, which the 
Eastern Church had not known. But this 
was thought necessary in order to make more 
secure the sinlessness of Christ and the purity 
of His life-giving flesh. It did not become a 
formal dogma till a later age (1854), but it was 
a belief widely prevalent from the twelfth cen- 
tury and earlier. 2 

And the outcome of it all in Western Chris- 

1 "Durandus Troarnen," cited by Batiffol, in "L'Eucharistie," 
P- 379- 

2 Roman Catholic theologians defend the recent Latin dogma 
(1854) that Mary herself was immaculately conceived, on the 
ground that it is contained implicitly in the action of the Third 
General Council which canonized Mary as the Mother of God. 
The Roman Church, says Duchesne, received the cult of the Virgin 
Mary from the Greek Church (cT importation byzantine), and Latin 
theologians are surprised when Episcopal voices in the Greek 
Church now protest against the new honors which the Roman 
Church has decreed to the Mother of God. ("Eglises Separees," 
p. no.) 



i6o FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



tendom. The consciousness of the Latin Medi- 
aeval Church found most rare and wonderful 
expression in the ecclesiastical art of the Renais- 
sance. There it was unmistakably evident, even 
if it were not in so many other ways, that it was 
the Virgin Mary, not God, not Christ, whom 
Christendom was worshipping, to whom it 
looked for aid and protection. Once more the 
conviction is borne in upon us by the teaching 
of history that it is the consciousness of God 
which makes a people strong. That conscious- 
ness had well-nigh died out in Italy, where the 
Renaissance had its birth. As the contents of 
the mediaeval religious life were exhibited on 
the canvas with the skill of a matchless art, the 
proportions of faith became apparent. The land 
was covered with Madonnas ; the people fed upon 
them to satiety. The few efforts to represent God 
the Father resulted in a venerable head, weak and 
inefficient and lacking even the power of Jupi- 
ter Capitolinus, who seems to have been taken 
for a model. It may have been the limits of art 
that were at fault. None the less striking is the 
result. And as for Italy, alone among the 
nations she was unable to take the first steps 
toward national independence and freedom, but 
fell under the thraldom of a foreign power, 
going down into the sleep of death for ages before 
her resurrection came. 



CHAPTER VI 



THE CHANGE IN THE DOCTRINE OF THE INCAR- 
NATION AT THE REFORMATION 

The most characteristic feature of the Eng- 
lish people, of the English Church and the Eng- 
lish nation in the sixteenth century is the pre- 
vailing sense of the presence of God. It may- 
be discerned in the literature of the age, which, 
in its ephemeral products even, assumes a reli- 
gious tone, because of the consciousness that 
the will of God is manifested in the nation's 
experience. Only this deep, widespread con- 
viction, that God was acting, leading, and pro- 
tecting the nation, would have sufficed to carry 
it through the perils of the great transition. The 
state took on a divine character, the king's will 
was regarded as divine, because it was in har- 
mony with the people's will, and the will of the 
people was reflecting the will of God. The 
majesty of the Divine supremacy dwarfed all 
minor considerations and relegated them to a 
subordinate position. This feeling grew from 
the time when England, first of the nations, 

M 161 



i62 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



stepped forth from the fold of mediaeval Chris- 
tendom, declaring the state to be independent, 
and, under God, competent to rule its own affairs. 
From this time (1534) the belief grew stronger 
that God was leading, and in Him was protec- 
tion and safety ; till it culminated, at the moment 
when Latin Christendom, under the leadership 
of the Pope, concentrated its energies for the 
conquest of the rebellious nation. Then, at 
the Armada, it became the national conviction 
that the victory was not due to human agencies. 
"God blew" with His winds, and the fleet of the 
enemy was scattered or went down like lead in 
the mighty waters, and England was free. From 
that time England's greatness began to be felt. 
She advanced to the leadership amongthe nations, 
and has developed into a world power, in com- 
parison with which the civilization that grew up 
around the Mediterranean Sea, with Rome as 
its centre, seems small and insignificant. 1 
In this great hour of her history, the English 

1 There are many histories of England and of the Reformation, 
but in none of them have the issues at stake been more clearly 
apprehended than by Froude. The criticism his work encoun- 
tered was inspired to a large degree by religious and political 
prejudices. "He held strong views, " says Pollard, "and he made 
some mistakes; but his mistakes were no greater than those of 
other historians, and there are not half a dozen histories in the 
English language which have been based on so exhaustive a survey 
of original materials. " "Life of Cranmer," p. viii. 



DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 163 



Church was not engaged in an attempt to shore 
up the tottering Christianity of the Middle Ages 
or even of the ancient catholic Church in so 
far as it had influenced perversely mediaeval 
dogmatic forms. To get back to the will of 
Christ and to the commandments of God was 
the deliberate intention. At such moments in 
history it is given to see more plainly the issues 
that are vital to national prosperity. The Eng- 
lish Reformation had in it the elements of revo- 
lution. It was not the letter and the text of 
creeds, but Scripture as the Word of God, to 
which the Church gave the highest place. And 
the doctrine which the Church received was 
received from Scripture, not from tradition; as 
Christ had commanded and not as men had taught. 

The chief evil to be overcome was not, as in 
the case of Germany, the system of indulgences, 
for from that evil England had not so greatly 
suffered ; but rather the worship of man, which 
had been substituted for the worship of God. 
Mary worship, saint worship, image worship, 
against these the protest was made; and the 
steps taken to secure their abolition were radical 
and thoroughgoing, quite as much so as in any 
other country where the Reformation prevailed. 

It is apparent that the primary object was to 
give Christ an opportunity once more to be known 



164 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



in Himself, apart from His mother, — to be 
heard and seen, as when He once lived among 
men. For this reason Scripture was made 
supreme, because it contained the record of His 
life and the comment on that life by inspired 
evangelists, apostles, and teachers. The Church 
before the Reformation had lost the clew to the 
meaning of the New Testament, and for that 
reason did not find it so edifying as extracts from 
the fathers. A higher conception of the Incar- 
nation, which made the life of Christ historic 
and real, instead of illusory and perfunctory, 
was the first consideration, — in accordance 
with the words of St. Augustine: — 

"It behoveth us, to take great heed, lest 
while we go about to maintain the glorious 
Deity of Him which is man, we leave Him 
not the true bodily substance of a man." 
(Ep, 187.) 

To insist upon His glorious Deity, but also to 
regain the humanity which had been lost, was 
the aim. The Church of England redefined the 
doctrine of the Incarnation, and as General Coun- 
cils stood in the way, or their wrong interpreta- 
tion, she cleared the ground for action by de- 
claring that they not only " might err," but "had 



DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 165 

erred in things pertaining to God/' When it 
came to defining the Incarnation, the term 
" Mother of God/' which the councils had sanc- 
tioned, was rejected. With that exception, the 
second of the Thirty-nine Articles is in substan- 
tial harmony with the definition of the Council 
of Chalcedon, but that exception is an impor- 
tant and vital one. 



Church of England 

Article II 

The Son which is the Word 
of the Father, begotten from 
everlasting of the Father, the 
very and eternal God, and of 
one substance with the Father, 
took Man's nature in the womb 
of the blessed Virgin, of her 
substance : so that two whole 
and perfect natures, that is to 
say, the Godhead and Manhood, 
were joined together in one Per- 
son never to be divided, whereof 
is one Christ, very God, and 
very Man. 



The Symbol of Chalcedon, 

We, then, following the holy 
Father, all with one consent, 
teach men to confess one and 
the same Son, our Lord Jesus 
Christ, the same perfect in God- 
head and also perfect in man- 
hood; truly God and truly 
man, of a reasonable (rational) 
soul and body; consubstantial 
(coessential) with the Father 
according to the Godhead, and 
consubstantial with us accord- 
ing to the manhood; in all 
things like unto us, without 
sin; begotten before all ages 
of the Father according to the 
Godhead, and in these latter 
days, for us and for our sal- 
vation, born of the Virgin 
Mary, the Mother of God, ac- 
cording to the manhood; one 
and the same Christ, Son, Lord, 
Only begotten, to be acknowl- 



166 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



Church of England 
Continued 



The Symbol of Chalcedon, 
451 — Continued 

edged in two natures, incon- 
fusedly, unchangeably, indivis- 
ibly, inseparably; the distinction 
of natures being by no means 
taken away by the union, but 
rather the property of each na- 
ture being preserved, and con- 
curring in one Person and one 
subsistence, not parted or di- 
vided into two persons, but one 
and the same Son and only 
begotten, God the Word, the 
Lord Jesus Christ. 



No one can measure the significance of this 
action of the Church without full knowledge 
of the history of the fifth century. Two things 
were involved in it. One was the removal of the 
curse whichhad lain upon theAntiochican School, 
because they spoke against the term, Theotokos : 
"Nestorius hated of God, and Diodorus, and 
Theodorus of Mopsuestia and their diabolical 
tribe/' says the theologian John of Damascus; 
and the other result was the freedom gained for 
theological advance by emancipation from the 
prescription of tradition. The word theo- 
tokos was mischievous and misleading. It jars 
upon the reader of the definition of Chalcedon 
as not in harmony with its real purpose, — a com- 



DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 167 



promise or concession made in the interest of 
peace, and not in the interest of truth. At the 
time when the term was first introduced, Augus- 
tine had said that "as God, Christ had no 
mother/' The Church of England now elimi- 
nated the word from her formularies as well as 
from her definition of the faith. 1 The word 
which had abounded in ancient theologies and 
liturgies passed out of use and was well-nigh 
forgotten, except as a theological curiosity or 
historical reference. As such Coleridge en- 
countered it and made this comment : — 

1 Neither Newman, in Tract xc, nor Pusey, in his defence of it 
("The Articles treated on in Tract xc," London, 1 841), has alluded 
to the rejection of Ozotokos. Both overlook the fact, in their 
explanation of Article xxi, that the decisions of the Third and 
Fourth General Councils have been curtailed and in part cast 
aside. But that these Councils have erred, even in things pertain- 
ing to God, does not and ought not to destroy the veneration in 
which General Councils are to be held. Cranmer has given the 
true judgment in the "Reformatio Legum," "de Summa Trinitate," 
c. 14, where, after stating that we pay the greatest deference to the 
oecumenical councils (ingentem honorem libenter deferimus), he 
proceeds : Quibus tamen non aliter fidem nostram obligandam esse 
censemus, nisi quatenus ex Scripturis Sanctis confirmari possint. 
Nam concilia non nulla interdum errasse, et contraria inter sese 
definivisse, partem in actionibus juris, partim etiam in fide, mani- 
festum est." Cf. Hardwick, "His. of the Articles," p. 409. The 
same qualification is found in the Canon of 1871, — the doctrine 
must be gathered from Scripture. Cf. Cardwell, Synodalia, i. 
p. 126. 



168 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



"Nestorius was perfectly justifiable in his 
rejection of the epithet Ocotokos, as ap- 
plied to the mother of Jesus. The Church 
was even then only too ripe for the idola- 
trous hyper-dulia of the Virgin. . . . For 
an epithet, which conceals half of a truth, 
the power and concerningness of which 
relatively to our redemption by Christ 
depends on our knowledge of the whole, is 
a deceptive, and dangerously deceptive, 
epithet." {Op. cit., v, p. 60.) 

In this connection there was one obvious 
passage which occurs often in the writings of 
the Reformers, — the words of Jesus, when they 
told Him that His mother and His brethren 
stood without desiring to speak to Him. "And 
He said unto them, Who is my mother and who 
are my brethren ? He that doeth the will of my 
Father which is in heaven, the same is my 
mother and sister and brother." 

If it be said, as of late it has been said, that 
only the Universal Church, united in all its 
branches, can speak with authority in defining 
Christian doctrine, the answer is that the Church 
of England has spoken for herself, and without 
consultation with the rest of Christendom, nay, 
even, in opposition to it. The fact remains, 



< 



DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 169 

however it may fare with the theory. And 
surely the Church of England had as much 
right to reject a dogmatic statement of the 
Council of Chalcedon as the Pope had to reject 
its twenty-eighth canon, which limited his ec- 
clesiastical prerogative, as the former limited 
theological freedom and advance. And the 
National Church of England was standing on 
the same ground, when in the Articles it re- 
defined the faith, as was the group of National 
Churches assembled at Trent, when they put 
forth their dogmatic decisions. In the sixteenth 
century this principle was recognized and ac- 
cepted as valid. 1 

The word theotokos may now be dismissed. It 
has been dwelt upon, because it was the hinge 
of the controversy in the fifth century, when the 
ancient Church was making its departure from 
the earlier conception of the Incarnation ; when 
it was renouncing the individuality of the human 
nature of Christ, and attributing to His Mother 

1 Also the Eastern or Greek Church put forth in 1643 ^ ts 
"Orthodox Confession," without consultation with other branches 
of the Church Universal. Deep and important as the differences 
are between the historic branches of the Church of Christ, there 
does run beneath them all a common element, sometimes known 
as "undenominational Christianity," which means, in other words, 
devotion to the person of Christ, however inadequately apprehended. 
Therein lies the hope of a common Christendom, something always 
to be spoken of with respect and reverence. 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



the inheritance of sanctity and purity which 
marked His human nature, instead of to the grace 
of God, or the action upon Him of the Holy Spirit. 
At the Reformation all the Protestant churches 
alike rejected, without discussion, the designa- 
tion of Mary as the "Mother of God/' In 
England neither Cranmer nor any of the Reform- 
ers attempted to work out a theory of the Incar- 
nation. It was not the English way. They 
were content with the freedom gained by the 
excision of the objectionable phrase, whose 
results, as they had been manifested in the his- 
tory of the Church, were a better commentary on 
its tendency than any abstract reasoning. That 
they appreciated the importance of regaining the 
full humanity of Christ may be inferred from a 
passage in the Homily on the Nativity and also 
from places in the Book of Common Prayer 
where the Manhood is associated with the 
Godhood in emphatic manner. Thus in the 
exhortation of the communion office the reference 
to "the death and passion of our Saviour Christ 
both God and man;" or in the Second Article, 
"whereof is one Christ, very God and very man 
or again in Article VII, "Christ the only media- 
tor between God and man, being both God and 
man. 93 

Reference has already been made to the theo- 



DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 171 



logical views of the Reformers in the sixteenth 
century, who gave to the Church the Book of 
Common Prayer. We return to the subject 
again, for the purpose of learning more definitely 
the meaning of those formularies, — the vows 
of the ordinal, the interpretation of the creeds, 
the "doctrine of Christ, as Christ hath com- 
manded, and as this Church hath received the 
same, according to the commandments of God." 

It might naturally be objected that no body 
of men in any one age should have the authority 
to determine the interpretation of the doctrine 
of this Church for subsequent ages. But we 
are concerned with the fact; and the fact re- 
mains that the Reformers did devise the vows 
of the ordinal, which were substituted for the 
vows of the old order. If the question of clerical 
honesty is at issue, there is no other way than to 
get back to the original purport of our formula- 
ries, and this can only be done by ascertaining 
the mind of those who wrote them. Whether 
they ought to be in the Prayer Book or not is 
another question. They are there. And such is 
the subtle force of the written word, that an in- 
fluence constantly emanates from the action of 
the Reformers, and must always continue to do 
so, no matter how far we may have wandered 
from the original sense. In a church constituted 



172 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 

on such a basis, the spirit of the Reformation 
will never be without its witnesses, more espe- 
cially as that spirit meant the freedom where- 
with Christ hath made us free. 

But again, in further reply to the possible ob- 
jection which may question the equity of tying 
a church to the standards of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, it must be said that the age of the Refor- 
mation stands out in history with a singular and 
unparalleled preeminence. It was a great re- 
vealing epoch in the history of religion, as well as 
of the human mind, to be compared only with 
the age of the advent of Christ, or of that earlier 
moment in history when the prophets arose in 
Israel. The greatness of the Reformation age 
was illustrated in the coming to the birth of 
the modern nations, when the freedom of hu- 
manity was secured in its essential principle, and 
the world entered upon a new career of prog- 
ress ; when for the first time a real and genuine 
catholicity became possible, and the old con- 
ventional catholicity, which hovered around an 
inland sea, gave way to a universality, of which 
oceans were the highway and the whole area 
of the globe the theatre of action. 

The greatness of the age of the Reformation, 
which entitles it to speak with authority to 
subsequent ages, was the mighty, all-controlling 



DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 173 



sense of the power and the presence of God. 
In the power of that presence, the humanita- 
rianism of the Middle Ages, which gave birth 
to institutions and customs, shelters, places of 
refuge, penitential methods with indulgences 
annexed, shielding men from the consciousness 
of the immediate relationship with God, — these 
things grew weak and God alone was exalted 
in that day. Hence the Reformers gained the 
supreme confidence, the amazing boldness to 
speak, so that they did not need to take thought 
beforehand, for it was not so much they that 
spoke, as the Holy Spirit that was speaking 
through them. To get back again to the reality 
was the predominant aim, and in so doing to get 
rid of all the lower worships of Mary and of the 
saints, which had hidden God from view. Since 
tradition stood in the way of this return, they 
made war upon tradition, no matter how long 
established or lofty its prestige. No human 
authority intimidated. No church was infalli- 
ble, only God was that. To the Bible they 
turned, as the Word of God, and as containing 
all things necessary to salvation. From the 
Bible, they learned the way to the true doctrine 
of the Incarnation, from which the Church of 
the fifth century or earlier had departed. 
And the true doctrine of the Incarnation re- 



i 7 4 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 

quired that the glory should be attributed to God 
and not to Mary. To Mary as "the Mother 
of our Saviour/' 1 — such was the designation 
of the Reformers, they gave becoming, but no 
undue, reverence. It was the common belief 
of all the reformers alike, whether in England 
or on the Continent : — 

"We do not hold Christ to be free from all 
taint merely because He was born of a 
woman unconnected with a man, but be- 
cause he was sanctified by the Spirit, so that 
the generation was pure and spotless/' 
(Calvin, "Instit.," ii, c. 13.) 

The Reformers challenged the whole mass of 
subtle speculation, which attributed to the 
Virgin-birth as such, the breaking of the entail 
of sin. They did not deny the Virgin-birth, they 
affirmed it when the occasion of their subject 
demanded. But their criticism, their comment, 
must have almost seemed to their adversaries as 
tantamount to denial, for they made little or no 
effort to explain or justify, they attached for the 
most part slight importance to the circumstance, 
they put at times such an interpretation on the 

1 "Mother to our Saviour Jesus Christ" is also the formula of 
the Homilies. 



DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 175 



clause in the Creed, "born of the Virgin Mary," 
as to make it seem a matter of indifference whether 
or no the Virgin-birth were true. In the writings 
of Bishop Jewell (f 1571), whose Apology 
("Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae") is "the most 
complete expression of the distinctive position 
of the English Church," these are among the 
comments : — 

"The nearness of mother's blood should 
have profited Christ's mother nothing at all, 
unless she had more blessedly carried Christ 
in her heart than in her body." ("Works," 

ii> 757-) 

"Verily, Mr. Harding, to be the child of 
God is a great deal greater grace than to be 
the Mother of God." 

" Mary was more blessed or fuller of grace, 
in that she received the faith of Christ, than 
in that she conceived the flesh of Christ." 
("i, 578-) 

Bishop Latimer, the hero of the English Refor- 
mation, came near getting into trouble, in the 
reign of Henry VIII, before the Reformation 
had begun, by his plain speech about the Virgin 
Mary, — her perpetual virginity, and also the 
virginity in partu, which he condemned as 



176 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 

amounting to a rejection of the humanity of 
Christ. Since the days of Augustine, who from 
a sense of delicacy and courtesy had been willing 
to admit that Mary was sinless, this concession 
had hardened into a dogma, which it was peril- 
ous to deny. Bishop Latimer was still in 
bondage to the unreformed faith, but his mind 
had begun to move, and this was one of the start- 
ing points of his departure. His enemies were 
vindictive and fierce. He qualified his language 
somewhat, but was able to make an issue, 
that, whether or no Mary ever sinned, like all 
others she was saved, and needed to be saved 
by Christ. 

"And to that [question] 'What need you 
to speak of this ? ' I answered, ' Great need : 
when men cannot be content that she was a 
creature saved, but as it were a Saviouress, 
not needing salvation, it is necessary to set 
her in her degree to the glory of Christ, Crea- 
tor and Saviour of all that be or shall be 
saved. Good authors have written that 
she was not a sinner but good authors 
never wrote that she was not saved. . . . 
There was difference betwixt her and Christ : 
and I will give as little to her as I can, 
rather than Christ her Son and Saviour shall 



DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 177 



lack any parcel of his glory/ " (" Remains," 
p. 227.) 1 

There was little inclination among the reform- 
ers to magnify virginity as a virtue. Monas- 
teries had been suppressed throughout the king- 
dom, and monks and nuns had been turned 
adrift. The state was consolidating itself on the 
basis of the family, as the sacred ultimate foun- 
dation of national prosperity. On this point the 
Reformers spoke, somewhat in the vein of the 
early fathers before monasticism arose. Among 
them was Becon, an influential writer, chaplain 
to Archbishop Cranmer, and a canon of Canter- 
bury. He escaped the martyrdom reserved for 
Ridley, Latimer, Cranmer, and others, but he 
suffered much for his adherence to the Refor- 
mation, and in the language of the time was "a 
man mightily tossed about. " In his treatise on 
"The Demands of Holy Scripture/ 5 is given this 
question and answer : — 

"What is a Virgin ? In Scripture it signi- 
fies any honest, faithful woman; or the 
spouse of Christ. Which spouse is either 

1 Latimer may have been overawed by the fierceness of his 
opponents. What he really thought and would have said, but 
refrained from saying, was accomplished in Article XV, entitled 
Of Christ alone without sin. 

N 



178 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



any soul believing in Christ, and living 
honestly according to His word ; or else the 
whole congregation and Church of the faith- 
ful." 1 

In their comment on the clause "Born of the 
Virgin Mary," the Reformers were to a certain 
extent influenced by the necessity of opposition to 
the mystic utterances of Anabaptists, as Luther 
had also been roused by the teaching of the 
Zwickau prophets. It was the opinion of Joan 
of Kent, or Joan Bocher, that "our blessed 
Saviour did not take His body from the Virgin 
Mary, but passed through her as light through 
glass." The burning of this unfortunate woman 
for heresy (1550) is a blot upon the Reformation, 
to be compared with the burning of Servetus 
by Calvin, or the treatment accorded to Anne 
Hutchinson by the New England Puritans. She 
was a woman of an ultra-spiritual temperament, 
somewhat like the Quakers in her tendency to 
emphasize spirit in opposition to letter. When 
she was questioned by the Reformers, many of 
whom visited her in prison, in order to move her 
from the error of her ways, she answered, "I 
deny not that Christ is Mary's seed, or the 

1 " British Reformers," Becon, p. 423, London, Religious Tract 
Society. 



DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 179 



woman's seed; but Mary had two seeds, one 
seed of her faith and another seed of her flesh 
and in her body. There is a natural and cor- 
poral seed and there is a spiritual and an heav- 
enly seed, as we may gather of St. John, where he 
saith, 'The seed of God remaineth in him, and 
he cannot sin/ And Christ is her seed ; but he is 
become man of the seed of her faith and belief ; 
of spiritual, not of natural seed ; for her seed 
and flesh was sinful, as the flesh and seed of 
others." 1 

That the Reformers were a little confused by 
this utterance is apparent, for it had a double 
tendency, and left them as it were in a strait 
betwixt two. But it had the effect of leading 
them to assert more strongly the actual birth of 
Christ from Mary, and it afforded another argu- 
ment against the virginity in partu which was 
the popular belief. "How can we warrant 
Christ's humanity," writes Hutchinson, "if we 
make it uncertain whence he took it ? . . . If 
he had any humanity or manhood, he had it 
undoubtedly of his mother." It is not necessary 
to cite the opinion expressed alike by the Re- 
formers on this point. Latimer spoke for them, 
in resisting the opinion that the body of Christ 
was fantastical, but he associated with the 

1 Hutchinson, "Works," Parker Soc. ed., 146. 



i8o FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



teaching of Joan, the current ecclesiastical tra- 
dition, as having a like fantastical tendency. 
Of the doctrine known as the semper virginitas 
he says: "They that will go about and say that 
she brought Him forth without pain, not after 
the manner of other women, they seem to do 
more hurt than good : for so we might come in 
doubt whether He had a very body or not." 1 
The situation of the Reformers almost repro- 
duces that of the moment when the Creed took 
its rise, when the Gnostics were maintaining that 
Christ was not actually born, but passed from 
heaven through the body of His mother in a 
supernatural way. Against this the Creed was 
originally a protest — He was "born of the Vir- 
gin Mary." 

The sensitiveness now felt about the Virgin- 
birth has its roots in a divergence regarding the 
Incarnation. In the Anglican Church there 
has been developed, since the Reformation, a 
doctrine of the Incarnation w 7 hich, while it 
accepts the Virgin-birth and recognizes the 
miraculous element in the entrance of Christ 
into the world, as well as in His departure from 
it, yet does not regard it as an essential condi- 
tion for the incarnation of God in Christ or 
dogmatically determine that God could have 

1 "Works," ii, 115. 



DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 181 



become incarnate in no other way. It places 
the stress not upon the Gospel of the Infancy, 
but upon the character and teaching of the 
mature Christ, upon His life and passion. 
For this view of the Incarnation, the Reformers 
prepared the way, by removing the obstacles 
which stood as a hinderance to its assertion 
and had so stood for ages. They laid the 
foundation for a more spiritual and effective 
conviction of the truth that God was in Christ 
reconciling the world unto Himself, but for the 
fuller presentation of the truth they had neither 
leisure nor opportunity. The generations that 
followed were preoccupied with other issues, — 
the conflict with Puritanism in the seventeenth 
century, the Deistic movement in the eighteenth. 
Not until the last century did there come the 
full moment when this central doctrine of the 
Christian faith could be adequately presented, 
as in the writings of Maurice, Hutton, Kingsley, 
Robertson, and the American Bushnell; and 
to this list may be added the name of Phillips 
Brooks, who was at the height of his power 
when elucidating the life and teaching and 
character of Christ. Never before has the 
meaning of the Incarnation been so powerfully 
illumined or with such triumphant success. 
But contemporaneously with this movement 



i8 2 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



in religious thought, which made the Incar- 
nation the central truth of the Christian faith, 
and called attention to the life of Christ 
portrayed in the Gospels, as the evidence of 
His divine Sonship, there came also a revival 
of the pre-reformation doctrine of the Incar- 
nation, which not only made the Virgin-birth 
so essential that the Incarnation could not be 
conceived or held without it, but sought to 
restore the terminology associated with the 
worship of the Virgin, which the Church of 
England has rejected. The issues and fortunes 
of theology are therefore involved at this point 
in the Creed, — "Born of the Virgin Mary." 
The insistence on the mediaeval view of the 
Incarnation, which, as has been shown, goes 
back in its origin to the fifth century, tends to 
beget a reactionary mood which leads to the 
denial of the Virgin-birth altogether. At this 
point the theological motive which springs from 
repugnance to the restoration of the pre- 
reformation theology may combine with another 
motive, derived from modern science, — the 
assertion of the uniformity of law and the im- 
possibility of the miracle. The increased at- 
tention given to the study of the New Testament 
has also disclosed hitherto unsuspected difficul- 
ties connected with the Virgin-birth, which of 



DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 183 



themselves would have begotten doubt, had 
there been no other cause. 

The modern sensitiveness on the subject of the 
Virgin-birth goes back to Coleridge (j- 1834), 
the most influential personage, for English 
thought, whether in literature, philosophy, or 
theology, that the nineteenth century produced. 
Neither Bushnell, nor Maurice, nor Robertson 
could have done their work without him; all 
acknowledged their indebtedness to him. Cole- 
ridge had turned his attention in his theological 
reading to the writers of the English Church in 
the seventeenth century, as having greater force 
and attraction than those of later generations, 
of whom the world was then getting tired. He 
went back therefore as a preparation for a for- 
ward step. He studied writers, like Hooker, 
Field, Donne, Jeremy Taylor, Richard Baxter, 
Leighton, Bull, and many others, especially 
those who had contributed anything to the doc- 
trine of the Trinity or the Incarnation. He 
fastened on the doctrine of the Trinity as the 
primary, fundamental, and all-inclusive doctrine 
of the Christian Church. He embraced with 
enthusiasm the church doctrine as set forth at 
the Council of Nicaea. He was not only fa- 
miliar with the nomenclature, but he rather 
gloried in its exact use to express the fact of the 



184 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



Incarnation — how the Logos, the Eternal Son, 
the second person in the Godhead, came down 
and was made man, how the Word became 
flesh and dwelt amongst us. 

But as Coleridge studied these writers of the 
seventeenth century, who in their aversion to 
Puritanism had resorted to the teachers of the 
ancient church for relief, he was led to ani- 
madvert upon many of their opinions as incom- 
patible with Scripture, with reason, or with the 
dictates of true religion. Dr. Donne, the dean 
of St. Paul's, and a friend of George Herbert, 
himself also a poet and a man of fanciful, im- 
aginative turn of mind, who revelled in quaint 
conceits, was pressing a view of the Incarnation 
and its connection with the Virgin-birth, against 
which Coleridge made his protest: — 

"The fear of giving offence, especially to 
good men of whose faith in all essential points 
we are partakers, may reasonably induce us 
to be slow and cautious in making up our 
minds finally on a religious question, and 
may, and ought to, influence us to submit 
our conviction to repeated revisals and re- 
hearings. But there may arrive a time of 
such perfect clearness of view respecting 
the particular point, as to supersede all 



DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 185 



fear of man by the higher duty of declaring 
the whole truth in Jesus. Therefore, hav- 
ing now passed six-sevenths of the ordinary 
period allotted to human life — resting my 
whole and sole hope of salvation and immor- 
tality on the divinity of Christ, and the 
redemption by His cross and passion, and 
holding the doctrine of the Triune God as 
the very ground and foundation of the 
Gospel faith — I feel myself enforced by 
conscience to declare and avow, that, in my 
deliberate judgment, the 'Christopaedia' 
prefixed to the third Gospel, and incorpo- 
rated with the first, but according to my 
belief the latest of the four, was unknown 
to, or not recognized by, the Apostles Paul 
and John; and that instead of supporting 
the doctrine of the Trinity and the Filial 
Godhead of the Incarnate Word, as set 
forth by John i. 1, and by Paul, it, if not 
altogether irreconcilable with this faith, 
doth yet greatly weaken and bedim its evi- 
dence ; and that by the too palpable contra- 
dictions between the narrative in the first 
Gospel and that in the third, it has been a 
fruitful magazine of doubts respecting the 
historic character of the Gospels themselves. 
I have read most of the criticisms on this 



186 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



text, and my impression is, that no learned 
Jew can be expected to receive the common 
interpretation as the true primary sense 
of the words. The severely literal Aquila 
renders the Hebrew word veavis a young 
woman, girl, maiden. But were it asked of 
me : Do you then believe our Lord to have 
been the son of Mary by Joseph ? I reply : 
It is a point of religion with me to have no 
belief one way or the other. I am in this 
way like St. Paul, more than content not 
to know Christ Himself /caret crdpKa. It is 
enough for me to know that the Son of 
God became flesh, <rap£ eyevero yevo/xevos 4k 
ywaiKos, and more than that, it appears 
to me, was unknown to the Apostles, 
or, if known, not taught by them as apper- 
taining to a saving faith in Christ. — 
October, 1831 1 

1 "Works," Shedd's ed., v. 79. Commenting on one of 
Donned sermons, where he is dealing with the Virginity in partu, 
which is the authorized interpretation by the Greek and Roman 
churches of the clause, " Born of the Virgin Mary," Coleridge 
remarked : " I think I might safely put the question to any 
serious, spiritual-minded Christian : what one inference tending 
to edification, in the discipline of will, mind, or affections, he can 
draw from the speculations of the last two or three pages of this 
sermon, respecting Mary's pregnancy and parturition ? Can — 
I write it emphatically — can such points appertain to our faith 
as Christians, which every parent would decline speaking of 
before a family, and which, if the questions were propounded by 



DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 187 



Dr. Donne thought it was the wish of Christ 
that the Virgin-birth should not be taught or 
mentioned. 

"Very ingenious/' says Coleridge, "but 
likewise very presumptuous, this arbitrary 
attribution of St. Paul's silence and pre- 
sumable ignorance of the virginity of Mary, 
to Christ's own determination to have the 
fact passed over." The further expression 
of Coleridge's thought is given in the fol- 
lowing citations from his writings : 

"O, what a tangle of impure whimsies 
has this notion of an immaculate concep- 
tion, an Ebionite tradition, as I think, 
brought into the Christian Church. I have 
sometimes suspected that the Apostle John 
had a particular view to this point in the first 
half of the first chapter of his Gospel . . . 
and met it by the true solution, the Eternal 
Filiation of the Word." (p. 276.) 

"Non nude hominem — not a mere man 
do I hold Jesus to have been and to be; but 
a perfect man, and by personal union with 
the Logos, perfect God. That His having 

another in the presence of my daughter, aye, or even of my, no 
less in mind and imagination, innocent wife, I should resent as 
as an indecency ? " (p. 80.) 



i88 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



an earthly father might be requisite to His 
being a perfect man, I can readily suppose; 
but why the having an earthly father should 
be more incompatible with His perfect 
divinity, than His having an earthly mother, 
I cannot comprehend. All that John and 
Paul believed, God forbid that I should 
not.- (P. 436.) 

" It may deserve attention from the zealous 
advocates of the authenticity of the Evan- 
gelium Infantiae, prefixed to the Gospel of 
Luke and concorporated with the canonical 
revision of Matthew's — whether the im- 
maculate conception of the Virgin is not a 
legitimate corollary of the miraculous con- 
ception of our Lord, so far at least that the 
same reason, that rendered it impossible 
for Him to have an immaculate father, is 
equally cogent for the necessity of an 
immaculate mother. 

" But alas ! in subjects of this sort, we can 
only stave off the difficulty. It is a point in 
a circle, on whichever side we remove from 
it, we are sure to come round to it again. 
So here, either the Virgin's ancestors, pater- 
nal and maternal, from Adam and Eve down- 
ward, were all sinless; or her immediate 
father and mother were not so, but like the 



DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 189 

rest of mankind involved in original sin. 
But if a sin-stained father and mother could 
produce an immaculate offspring in one 
instance, why not in the other ? That the 
union of the Divine Word with the seed 
and nature of man should preclude the con- 
tagion of sin in the Holy Child, is as much 
to be expected on the one supposition of our 
Lord's birth as on the other. So far from 
being a greater miracle, it seems so neces- 
sarily involved in the miracle of the Incarna- 
tion, common to both, as scarcely to be 
worthy of being called an additional miracle. 
The accidental circumstance, that the Uni- 
tarian party, most palpably to their own dis- 
advantage, reject or question the chapter in 
question, is the chief cause of the horror with 
which our orthodox divines recoil from every 
free investigation of the point." (P. 532.) 

It was one of the ecclesiastical events in the 
last century, which amazed all thoughtful men, 
when the Roman Church, under the lead of 
Pope Pius IX, proclaimed the new dogma of the 
immaculate conception of Mary. It was to be 
sure the necessary and logical sequence of the 
belief that the birth from a virgin was essential 
to the Incarnation; that the Incarnation could 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



not have been otherwise in the nature of the 
case. God and Mary, so ran the argument, 
were the parents of Jesus, the one furnishing the 
divinity, the other the humanity. But since the 
humanity of Jesus was exceptional and divine, 
and the flesh of His body sacred and life-giving, 
Mary must herself have been an exceptional 
being, a quasi divine person, sinless, and in order 
to sinlessness immaculately conceived. But to 
glorify Mary was also an end in the mind of 
Pius IX. In the famous painting in the Vati- 
can, executed at the order of the Pope to com- 
memorate the new dogma, Mary has taken her 
place in the sacred Trinity, along with the Eter- 
nal Father and the Eternal Son, as having an 
equal share with Deity, in bringing to the world 
the blessing of the Incarnation. 

The nineteenth century was, by common con- 
sent, the most enlightened, the most progressive, 
in the world's history. No other century could 
compare with it for great discoveries, for powerful 
illumination in every department of life, in 
science, in literature, in art, in philosophy. How, 
then, could so retrogressive a step have been 
taken, which outdid the dreams in the Middle 
Ages ? Among those who wondered was the 
late Frederick Robertson, who was preaching in 
the fifties, and for whom the new dogma fur- 



DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 191 



nished the subject of two of his most notable 
sermons, "The Glory of the Virgin Mother" and 
"The Glory of the Divine Son." 

"How comes it to pass," he asks, "after 
three hundred years of Reformation, we find 
Virgin-worship restoring itself again in this 
reformed England, where, least of all coun- 
tries, we should expect it, and where the re- 
membrance of Romish persecution might 
have seemed to make its return impossible ? 
... It is the doctrine to which the con- 
verts to Romanism cling most tenaciously." 

Robertson had felt the force of that severe 
reaction through which the last century passed, 
when humanity, as it were, rose up in its might 
to dethrone the deity. But he escaped its evil 
effects, and his answer to the question is true. 
Mary worship is "idolatry, in modern Romanism, 
a pernicious and most defiling one," where the 
worship of the mother overshadows the worship 
of the Son, and the love given to her is so much 
taken from Him. The remedy for it is to get 
back to the full humanity of Jesus. Because 
the humanity of Christ had been lost sight of 
or obscured, through inferences from a wrong 
conception of the Incarnation, the world had 



192 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 

turned to Mary as a substitute. " The true 
glory of the Virgin was the glory of true woman- 
hood, . . . not immaculate origin, nor immacu- 
late life, nor exaltation to divine honors . . . 
the glory of motherhood ; . . . not the Queen 
of Heaven, but something nobler still, a crea- 
ture content to be what God had made her." 
("Sermons," ii, 277 ff., first Am. ed.) 

Robertson's prophetic call to return to the 
humanity of Christ, as the way to overcome false 
worship, has been fulfilled, but in larger and 
different measure than he anticipated. The 
ecclesiastical reaction, which was moving Rome- 
ward, was checked bv the rise of Biblical and 
historical criticism, — by the "higher criticism" 
of the New Testament in particular, which has 
brought back to the world the historical Christ, 
till at last we are beginning to know 7 what man- 
ner of man He w r as. Through the contempla- 
tion of His personality, He now begins to stand 
revealed to the modern world, as never before, 
in all the history of the Church, was He seen or 
known. No greater boon was ever given to the 
world than this. But as we study the records 
of His life, the mystery of His person also grows. 
Into the depths of His consciousness, no one can 
ever hope fully to penetrate. But at least Christ 
realizes to faith all that the religious imagination 



DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 193 



could ask for, if " God was in Christ reconciling 
the world unto Himself" (2 Cor. v. 19). We 
can understand how St. Paul, from his knowledge 
of Christ after the flesh, should have been led 
to say, "Wherefore God also hath highly exalted 
Him, and given Him a name which is above 
every name, that in the name of Jesus every 
knee should bow, of things in heaven and things 
in earth, and things under the earth, and that 
every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is 
Lord to the glory of God the Father" 



o 



CHAPTER VII 



MODERN SENSITIVENESS ABOUT THE VIRGIN- 
BIRTH 

It is to have been devoutly wished that the 
present controversy about the Virgin-birth had 
not arisen to disturb the peace of the Church. 
Many of those who feei keenly the modern diffi- 
culties would have preferred to allow objections 
to slumber, in the conviction that no serious issue 
was involved. There will always be a large 
number brought up from infancy within the 
Church, who will continue to think and to talk 
in the old way, however the critical questions 
regarding the fact may be determined. There 
are many subjects in the field of religion or 
theology where the mind, the intellectual facul- 
ties, remain willingly in suspense, and in such 
an attitude may lie prudence and the highest 
wisdom, even the possibility of the larger 
growth. There is much to be said in behalf 
of the Virgin-birth which should moderate or 
conciliate those who oppose it. The first man, 
who was of the earth earthy, came into the 

194 



MODERN SENSITIVENESS 195 



world, according to the faith of ancient peoples, 
in some supernatural way by a special divine 
creative act. The conception of man's descent 
after the modern evolutionary hypothesis will 
never quite destroy the beautiful vision, as it has 
been represented in art by Michael Angelo, of 
the first man in his first act after the creation, 
touching with his hand the hand of God. Poetry 
and art are intimately associated with religion. 
The primary religious question is, not whether a 
certain doctrine is true, for we may have no 
canons of determining truth; but, what does it 
mean, — a question we can always answer. If 
the appearance of the first man is more truly 
represented to the religious imagination, as 
proceeding forth from the Divine will, after 
special deliberation in the councils of heaven, 
much more must the second man, who is the Lord 
from heaven, have entered upon the scene of 
His task on earth in some still more special and 
supernatural way. Such is, and is likely to 
remain, the working of the religious instinct as 
it seeks to reproduce the actual fact, to cover with 
a delicate veil the material process, to see only 
the spiritual, that which transcends the earthly 
and transfigures it. It is the very nature of 
religion that it tends to cultivate good taste, as 
well as a right heart and right living. The dig- 



196 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



nity of the situation demands dignity in the 
recognition. "It was becoming" is a response 
that can justify belief. We can understand 
how, without controversy, Augustine should in 
summary fashion announce that the question 
was closed, in regard to the mother of our Lord. 
Out of respect to Christ, as he said, let there be 
no admission in her case of actual sin. Even 
Martin Luther, who had the clearest anticipation 
of the modern view of the Incarnation after 
ages which had groaned in ignorance of the full 
truth, even Luther could not escape from the en- 
vironment of the religious imagination, where 
poetry and art, and refined religious sensibility, 
played about the person of Mary. 1 The fol- 
lowing exalted passage breathes the incense of 
the religious spirit : — 

"Behold thus did Christ take to Himself 
from us our birth and insert it unto His birth, 
and give in His own, in order that by it, we 
may become pure and new, as though it 
were our own. Every Christian, therefore, 
may exult and boast in the birth of Christ, 

1 Cf. a very interesting passage in Dorner, " Person of Christ," 
Div. ii, vol. ii, p. 91 (Eng. tr.), where the thought of Luther about 
Mary is given. But he also maintained, says Dorner, that Christ 
took upon Him our fallen nature. "The roots of the idea of a puri- 
fication of Mary from original sin were thus cut away," etc. 



1 



II}- 

j 

MODERN SENSITIVENESS 197 

just as though he himself had been physically 
born of Mary like Christ. Whoso doth not 
believe or doubteth this, is no Christian. 
This is the sense of Isaiah ix. 6 : "Unto us a 
Child is born, unto us a Son is given." Us, 
us, to us it is born, to us it is given. There- 
fore see thou that thy delight in the Gospels 
is derived not solely from the history itself ; 
for it exists not long: but make thou His 
birth thine own; exchange with Christ, so 
that thou mayest get quit of thy birth and 
appropriate His. This takes place when 
thou believest. Then wilt thou of a cer- 
tainty lie in the womb of the Virgin Mary 
and be her dear child." 1 

It is a generalization from our knowledge of 
history that all its greater epochs and moments 
of revelation are represented as ushered in by the 
miracle, or by an opening of the heavens which 
gives us a glimpse of a higher, more blessed world 
than that we see. At the creation the morning 
stars sang together and the sons of God shouted 
aloud for joy. When prophecy was born, there 
came first as its heralds the prophets who were 
greater in deed than in word : Elijah and Elisha, 
who moved in an atmosphere of the miraculous, 

1 Dorner, op. cit. y p. 105. 



198 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



a most unusual feature of Jewish history. Before 
the inspired Word came the supernatural act, 
and the way was prepared for the prophets with 
whom God talked. That the Virgin-birth should 
form one of the prologues of the Gospel of 
Christ was inevitable, and its grandeur is unsur- 
passed, not equalled, by the glories of the first 
creation. The song of the angels, the heavenly 
message of good-will to men, go with the ac- 
count of the Annunciation and they constitute 
an adequate setting of the event which redeems 
the world. Once more it was to happen that 
an event would take place calling for a voice 
from heaven, as when peace came to the perse- 
cuted Church and the triumph over the old world 
of force and sense; when Constantine, it may 
have been on Monte Mario, overlooking the 
Eternal City on the eve of the decisive battle of 
the Milvian Bridge, heard the words in a vision, 
"By this sign conquer/' 

The world will cherish these things, scholars 
and critics no less than the purely religious 
mind, if only they be not turned into the form 
of dogma to be accepted on the authority of 
the Christian Church, as an infallible guide to 
religious truth. It is this tendency to dogma- 
tize about the Virgin-birth, and to make it 
essential to the Incarnation, or as if a belief 



MODERN SENSITIVENESS 199 



necessary to salvation, which in turn begets a 
reaction, tempting men to become "martyrs of 
disgust/' to deny and reject as untrue the 
external incident, whose misinterpretation it is 
and not the incident itself, which is out of 
harmony with Scripture and with the revelation 
of modern life. 

It is a relief, then, and it brings freedom, to 
turn to Scripture as authority, and not to the 
tradition of the Church as an infallible guide, 
in matters of faith. For nowhere have we been 
taught in Scripture or in our formularies that 
the Christian Church is such a guide. On 
the contrary, it is declared in the Articles that 
the churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alex- 
andria have erred, and that the Church of 
Rome hath also erred, even in things pertain- 
ing to the faith. If they have erred, and in 
the happier ages of the Catholic Church, 
what guarantee have we that the Anglican 
Church may not err. Certainly the Church 
of England does not claim for herself an 
inerrancy which she refuses to the ancient 
churches of Christendom. Nowhere in her for- 
mularies does she show any solicitude for her 
own infallibility. Nor does she show solicitude 
for the creeds. Her sole solicitude is for the 
maintenance of the Word of God, uncorrupted 



200 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 

by men's traditions or made of no effect by the 
commandments of men. This over-concern 
about the creeds 1 indicates a weakening hold 
upon the doctrine as Christ hath commanded 
and as this Church hath received the same. 
This ultra-devotion to the creeds has now gone so 
far that those who draw their doctrine from Scrip- 
ture, diligently studied and with such aids as 
help to the knowledge of the same, and who are 
inwardly persuaded of the truth they hold, are 
accused of betraying the faith, or charged with 
lacking any objective basis for their faith, and 
their belief is counted as a vain thing, because 
it rests on the shifting sands of subjectivity. 
There is confusion here and grave misunderstand- 
ing. It can only be overcome by taking the vows 
of the Ordinal as meaning what they say, as carry- 
ing the meaning which those who placed them in 
the Prayer Book intended them to convey. We 

1 The Catholic Church existed for four centuries, at its best and 
doing its greatest work, without any creed in its offices, liturgical or 
other. Peter the Fuller, patriarch of Antioch, was the first to intro- 
duce the Creed into the Liturgy, in the time of the Monophysite 
controversy about 470. The precedent was adopted by Constanti- 
nople about 510, and then by Spain 589; by the Gallican and 
Anglican churches about the eighth century, and by Rome so late 
as the eleventh. In the offices of the Breviary, the use of the Creed 
was ordered in the ninth century. The Creed was neither sung 
nor said during mass at Rome until the time of Benedict VIII 
(1012-1024). Cf. "Ordo Romanus Primus, " ed. by Atchley, 
p. 80. 



MODERN SENSITIVENESS 



must revert again to that earlier position that 
Scripture is above the creeds, and that the 
creeds are to be interpreted by Scripture and 
not the Scripture by the creeds. The vow which 
the Church imposes on her clergy to be "diligent 
in reading of the Holy Scriptures, and in such 
studies as help to the knowledge of the same," 
makes progress possible, while to put the 
creeds above Scripture, as the key to their inter- 
pretation, makes it impossible. The Church of 
England is in harmony with the spirit of those 
memorable words of Robinson, the Puritan 
minister, that God may yet have more light to 
break forth from His Holy Word. But we need 
not go outside of the Church for such reminders. 
Our own Bishop Butler in the Analogy has 
uttered the same conviction : — 



"And as it is owned the whole scheme of 
Scripture is not yet understood, so if it ever 
comes to be understood before the restitu- 
tion of all things, and without miraculous 
interpositions, it must be in the same way as 
natural knowledge is come at: by the con- 
tinuance and progress of learning and lib- 
erty, and by particular persons attending 
to, comparing, and pursuing intimations 
scattered up and down it, which are over- 



202 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 

looked and disregarded by the generality of 
the world. For this is the way in which all 
improvements are made, by thoughtful 
men's tracing on obscure hints, as it were, 
dropped us by nature accidentally, or which 
seem to come into our minds by chance. 
Nor is it at all incredible that a book, which 
has been so long in the possession of man- 
kind, should contain many truths as yet 
undiscovered'' (Pt. ii, chap, iii.) 

To this test the creeds must be constantly 
subjected, and through the process of this test 
they are passing to-day. Whether we approve or 
not, however great our regret or pain at seeing 
things which we cherish become subjects of 
doubt or controversy, the wiser course is to 
accept an inevitable situation, and wait for the 
conclusion equally inevitable. In the case of 
the Virgin-birth the candid student in search 
for the truth, wall rightly dwell on its tendency 
to prevent the person of Christ from being 
regarded as an evolution from humanity by a 
natural process; or to represent the subordina- 
tion of man to the transcendent will of Deity, 
the exaltation of God and not of man. These 
considerations constitute a presumption in favor 
of its truth, in addition to the weight of the 



MODERN SENSITIVENESS 203 



Gospel narratives. But there are also objections 
and difficulties which create doubt and uncer- 
tainty. It will not meet the case to say that 
these objections are frivolous, captious, not 
to be taken seriously, or that those who make 
them are insincere, or seeking to discredit 
Scripture. The Bible as the word of God con- 
tains all things necessary to salvation. But all 
that is written in Scripture is not in the fullest 
or truest sense Scripture. Else should the speech 
of Bildad the Shuhite be placed on the same foot- 
ing as the utterances of great prophets. There 
are parts of Scripture which are like the fixed 
stars shining by their own light and centres of 
vast systems, while other parts are subordinate 
and inferior. The Virgin-birth is contained in 
Scripture, but the question before the devout 
scholar is whether it is such an essential integral 
part of the Scripture as to be intimately bound 
up with the things necessary to salvation. The 
incident of the Virgin-birth is given in two only 
of the four Gospels, and never alluded to again. 
Christ Himself does not refer to it. The three 
great apostles, Peter and John and Paul, are si- 
lent about it. The attitude of Mary as given in 
the evangelical narratives seems to many incon- 
sistent with the knowledge or consciousness of 
such a wonderful circumstance as the Annuncia- 



FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



tion. And further a suspicion has arisen that 
in the New Testament itself there is another way 
of referring to the birth of Christ, 1 which has been 
overlooked under the influence of the convic- 
tion of the Virgin-birth ; so that when it occurs 
it has been interpreted as a way of speaking, a 
concession, a suppression required by the occa- 
sion. It may be so, but this is a question not 
to be determined in any a priori way. There 
is nothing in the Virgin-birth incompatible with 
the teaching of St. John or of St. Paul ; but the 
circumstance of their silence would at least seem 
to imply that it was not so essential, as that a 
belief in the Incarnation depended on it. 2 

1 Cf. Luke iv. 22; John i. 45; vi. 42. 

2 In his valuable treatise on the "Incarnation," Dr. Briggs has 
remarked: "All that we have thus far learned of the incarnation 
from the teaching of Jesus and the writings of St. Paul, St. John, 
and the Epistle to the Hebrews, would stand firm if there had been 
no Virgin-birth; if Jesus had been born of Joseph and Mary, 
having father and mother, as any other child. Therefore the 
Virgin-birth is only one of many statements of the mode of 
the incarnation. It has no more documentary value, no more 
intrinsic importance, than any other of the many we have thus far 
studied. The doctrine of the incarnation does not depend upon 
the Virgin-birth. Since all the other passages relating to the in- 
carnation, except that of the Gospel of the Infancy, know nothing 
of the Virgin-birth, it is only a minor matter connected with the 
incarnation, and should have a subordinate place in the doctrine. 
That which is unknown to the teachings of St. Peter and St. 
Paul, St. John and St. James, and our Lord Himself, and is 
absent from the earliest and latest Gospels cannot be so essential 
as many people have supposed" (p. 217). 



MODERN SENSITIVENESS 205 



It is said that if the greater writers of the 
New Testament are silent, as if they had not 
heard of the Virgin-birth, yet its universal ac- 
ceptance within the Church at the beginning 
of the second century constitutes an argument 
for its character as essential truth which can- 
not be overcome. Here, too, qualification is 
necessary lest we be misled by uncritical state- 
ments. Ignatius (f 117), it is true, had re- 
ceived the report, but exactly in what spirit is 
not quite so clear. He was an ecstatic soul, 
and numbered it with the mysteries of the 
passion and resurrection. But, on the other 
hand, he stands alone among the writings 
known as the Apostolic Fathers, in making ref- 
erence to it. These writings may extend, as to 
their date, nearly to the middle of the second cen- 
tury, beginning with Clement of Rome, a.d. 96. 
Clement is silent regarding it, so are Barnabas 
and Polycarp, and Papias in the few fragments 
of his book, and silent also are the authors of 
the Shepherd of Hermas 1 and of the Epistle to 
Diognetus. Aristides, the Apologist, had heard 
of it (133), introducing it in his first allusion 

1 Cf. Taylor, "The Witness of Hermas to the Four Gospels," 
London, 1892, pp. 30-32, for the suggestion of a possible reference 
in " Sim." ix (3, 4), in the bright unhewn stones, which make the 
foundation of the tower (16, 7). 



206 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



with "It is said/' but undoubtedly accepting it. 
This does not look like an universal consensus, 
but who shall say how much or how little in this 
case means the argument from silence ? 

When we come to Justin Martyr (f c. 165) or 
to Irenaeus, who followed him in the second cen- 
tury (f c. 190), two writers who fully accepted 
the fact of the Virgin-birth, we become aware, 
on a closer study of their writings, that the evi- 
dential value of the Virgin-birth, as a fulfilment 
of ancient prophecy, is a preponderating motive, 
if not the sole one, which recommends it to their 
reason. The Church was endeavoring to meet 
the charge of the heathens, that Christianity was 
a new religion, and that a new religion could not 
be true. To carry the religion of Christ back 
into the past, and to show that it had been 
anticipated and foretold centuries before Christ 
appeared, became therefore a motive with apolo- 
gists and polemical writers. When the Virgin- 
birth was accepted it became the most striking 
evidence of the fulfilment of a prophecy an- 
nounced some seven hundred years before 
(Is. vii. 14) ; and in comparison with such an 
antiquity, the prevailing religions in the empire 
could not compete. The claim was carried 
further back by means of the Virgin-birth to the 
creation itself, when Eve became the counter- 



MODERN SENSITIVENESS 207 



part of Mary. It is not here the Virgin-birth, 
in its miraculous aspect alone, or in any neces- 
sary relation to the Incarnation, but as an event 
taking off the rawness of novelty, answering 
the question, why Christianity had not appeared 
earlier on the scene, if it were a Divine revela- 
tion. This argument, which told most effectively 
in the second century, has now lost its force 
and been abandoned. 1 

It is necessary that we should give up the as- 
sumption that because a certain writer at a 
certain time refers to the Virgin-birth, therefore 
other writers accept it and in the same sense, 
or make the same use of it. If we find that 
Aristides mentions it, yet, on the other hand, 
Athenagoras does not (c. 177), and his Apology 
for power and elegance is unsurpassed. Ar- 
nobius makes no reference to it (c. 300), but 
his contemporary Lactantius does. The Apology 

1 See ante, p. 124. There was another line of evidence for the 
Virgin-birth and for the virginity in partu to which only a reference 
is here made. The reader who would know the sort of proof on 
which the early Church relied at the time when this doctrine was 
working its way to the popular acceptance may seek it for himself, 
in the " Protevangelium Jacobi" (19, 20), a book of great antiquity, 
widely circulated, whose gratuitous information, eminent Church 
fathers did not disdain to employ. In another work based on the 
so-called " Protevangelium, " known as the "Evangelium Pseudo- 
Matthaei," the same proof is incorporated. Cf. Coleridge's re- 
mark, in note to p. 186. 



2o8 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



of Minucius Felix is silent. Clement of Alex- 
andria does not cite the passages referring to it 
in Matthew and Luke. One reference to Christ 
as born of a Virgin is found in the Stromata (vi, 
1 5), but considering his views on virginity, it may 
be of doubtful value. Clement makes no use of 
the fact. Origen comments on the Gospel of the 
Infancy, but he builds up his doctrine of the 
Incarnation without reference to it. 

When we pass into the fourth century, it is 
a circumstance of significance, calling for ex- 
planation, that in the creeds of the churches of 
Jerusalem and Caesarea, the Virgin-birth is not 
mentioned, and its absence from the Creed of 
Nicaea is still more striking. It is these cumula- 
tive considerations, which, while they do not 
justify the denial of the Virgin-birth, yet do 
confirm the conviction that it is not so essential 
to the Incarnation as has been maintained ; that 
in the Eastern Church at least, however it may 
have been in the Western, the belief in the Incar- 
nation has not so universally associated with the 
Virgin-birth, as to be dependent upon it. 

The Church is also confronted to-day with the 
possibility that what has happened in the case 
of the opening chapters in the Book of Genesis 
may happen in the case of the Gospel of the 
Infancy as given by Matthew and Luke, — a 



MODERN SENSITIVENESS 209 



great falling away from the literal accept- 
ance once accorded them. Under these cir- 
cumstances, and with no additional evidence in 
confirmation of the narrative, it is not wise to 
attempt to bulwark the Virgin-birth by doubt- 
ful scientific analogies, or seek to show that the 
exceptional personality of Christ can only be 
explained by His exceptional birth. We have 
already gone too far in our dependence on the 
natural sciences. It is better to keep strictly 
to the religious sphere. Laws of heredity, laws 
of descent, character as resulting from inherited 
structure, considerations based on evolution, 
are out of place in religion. "Ce n'est pas 
la science qui nous manque, a nous modernes; 
nous 1'avons surabondamment. . . . Mais ce 
que nous avons absorbe, nous absorbe. Ce 
qui nous manque c'est la poesie de la vie." 
And indeed, the Virgin-birth, rightly interpreted, 
is a protest against the view that Christ comes 
forth from humanity by any process of evolu- 
tion or heredity. Coleridge 1 long ago disposed of 
this position, and his statement may be regarded 
as final, — that the sinlessness of Jesus is as 
difficult to account for with a human mother 
alone as with the ordinary parentage. Spencer- 
ism in theology leads inevitably to the novel 

1 See ante. 



2io FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



dogma of Rome (1854), that Mary herself was 
sinless because immaculately conceived. That 
pushes the difficulty back by a generation, where 
it is not quite so apparent, but it is there. A 
similar attempt to strengthen a dogma by an 
appeal to science was the acceptance of the prin- 
ciple of " natural selection" as the analogue of 
predestination in the Calvinistic theology. The 
Divine decree of election, it was said, meant that 
God would save all who were worth saving. 
The trouble with these and other apologetics 
for ancient dogmas is that they are rationalistic, 
treading where Scripture has not ventured, not 
only going beyond the Word of God, but by 
implication weakening the Scripture teaching 
regarding the Holy Spirit's agency, as though 
the Holy Spirit were not adequate to the task 
of guaranteeing the sinlessness of Jesus. "And 
the child grew, and waxed strong in Spirit; 
and the grace of God was upon Him." The 
grace of God, the "sufficient grace," is none 
other than the Holy Spirit, whose function it is 
in the economy of the eternal and ever blessed 
Trinity to unite together the Eternal Father and 
the Eternal Son in the bond of the infinite love ; 
whose function on earth is to bring all mankind 
into the same unity of the Divine love and into 
loving obedience to the Divine will. Surely, 



MODERN SENSITIVENESS 211 



then, the Holy Spirit, who ever waits upon the 
Father and the Son, who proceedeth from the 
Father and the Son, is adequate to explain the 
sinlessness of Jesus, without resort to some 
theory of natural law in the spiritual world. 

A mistake has been made at this point, and 
we need to retrace our steps. There may be 
imitations, dim prophecies of spiritual law in 
the natural world, which may serve as confirma- 
tions of our faith ; but to reverse the process and 
to project the natural into the spiritual order is 
to lead only to disaster. The experience of the 
ancient Catholic Church, as already given, is 
here a warning and not a precedent to be fol- 
lowed. And it is the reversion to that Catholic 
Church of the fifth century which in great 
measure explains the present embarrassment and 
sensitiveness about the Virgin-birth. 

And this process, naturalistic rather than 
spiritual, has been accompanied by another 
motive, engendered in the great romantic move- 
ment which swept like a whirlwind over the last 
century. Romanticism in literature and art, or 
in the Church, is a term too large to be here 
defined, but of some of its fruits in the ecclesias- 
tical sphere it may be said that they constitute 
a departure from the doctrine of Christ, as this 
Church hath received it. The Virgin-birth began 



212 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 

to rise into a prominence unknown since the 
Reformation, in consequence of the proclama- 
tion by Pope Pius IX (1854) of the dogma that 
Mary herself was immaculately conceived. To 
this motive must be added another — the influ- 
ence of Italian art, which to many has become 
almost their only religion, where the mediaeval 
worship of Mary has been presented as the 
central fact of the Christian faith. The appeal 
made by this feature of ecclesiastical art to the 
host of travellers and pilgrims who now visit 
Italy as a sacred land is responsible to some 
degree for giving an undue and exaggerated, 
even a morbid, prominence to the Virgin-birth, 
so that now when the clause is recited in 
the Creed, it is with difficulty we escape from 
it to the true and original purport of its inser- 
tion. 

It may serve to show how far we have travelled 
from the consciousness of our Protestant fore- 
fathers, and from the spirit of our formularies, 
if we turn to some of the commentaries on 
the Creed, which once enjoyed great vogue, 
and are now become unfamiliar. Among 
them is NowelPs " Catechism," very influential 
in the sixteenth century and after. There it 
reads : — 



MODERN SENSITIVENESS 213 

"Question. But why is there in this con- 
fession, the Apostles' Creed, mention made 
by name of the Virgin Mary ? 

"Answer. That He, Christ, may be known 
to be that true seed of Abraham and Da- 
vid, of whom it was from God foretold and 
foreshadowed by the prophecies of the 
prophets." (Parker Soc. ed., p. 135.) 

In Archbishop Seeker's "Lectures on the 
Catechism," 1 of which an American edition was 
published in 1835, it reads: — 

"The reason for inserting it [the name 
Mary] in the Creed most probably was be- 
cause it is set down in Scripture, and that 
by naming the particular person of whom 
our Saviour sprung, He might appear to be 
of that family from which it was foretold 
He should arise, being born of this Virgin 
of the house of David." (P. 67.) 

The Virgin-birth is not in the foreground of 
the consciousness of either writer; but both 
writers are in accord with the interpretation of 
the clause by Ignatius, who also insisted on 

1 Archbishop Seeker was born 1693 and died 1768. He was 
consecrated bishop of Bristol 1735; transferred to Oxford 1737, 
to which see was added the deanery of St. Paul's 1750; and en- 
throned Archbishop of Canterbury 1758. 



214 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



Christ's descent from the house of David as an 
essential thing, 1 that Christ was Messiah ful- 
filling the expectation of the ages. Hence the 
importance of the genealogies in the prologues 
of Matthew and Luke, and not merely the inci- 
dents of the Virgin-birth. 2 

The difficulties waiting upon the creeds and 
their interpretation are not likely to diminish, 
rather will they increase, for the question at 
issue is the freedom of the clergy and laity. 3 Is 

1 See ante, p. 108. 

2 It is now generally admitted that the genealogies trace the 
descent of Joseph and not of Mary. 

3 " The Church of England is based upon the Bible. The 
Reformation was essentially the creation of a new court of appeal, 
the shifting of the sanction for belief from the authority of the 
Church to the written word. The Church everywhere appeals to 
the written word; nothing which is not contained therein or justifi- 
able therefrom can be imposed upon a Christian man whether lay 
or cleric. The minister is to be a student of the Word. ' Will 
you be diligent in . . . reading of the Holy Scriptures and in 
such studies as help to the knowledge of the same ? ' " 

Mark the word " studies 99 : he is not to accept the documents 
as formal decrees with fixed traditional meaning, but as a literature 
of which he is progressively to learn the meaning. Now, if such 
be the position, it appears impossible to dispute the fact that, as 
study reveals a new content for the words, new meaning, new 
connotation in the Scriptures, there must be liberty of interpreta- 
tion of the formularies. If the formularies be the index, the 
summary, the table of contents of the Scriptures, and if study, 
imposed as a sacred duty, reveal new meaning of the Scriptures, 
that new meaning must inevitably be admitted in ascertaining and 
determining the meaning of the formularies. Rev. W. Manning, 
M.A., in Hihhert Journal, January, 1906, p. 413. 



MODERN SENSITIVENESS 215 



the Church of Christ free to examine and in- 
quire and to make use of such studies as help to 
the knowledge of the Scriptures; or are these 
things determined in advance by the authority of 
tradition as given in the creeds ? This Church 
inherits the spirit of freedom from the Anglican 
Church, and the Prayer Book is a powerful 
incentive to its exercise, and was intended so 
to be. Not until the Prayer Book is abandoned 
as a mistake and failure can the spirit of free- 
dom be exorcised. The rehabilitation of Con- 
stitution and Canons, the insistence that the 
Church is organized as a business corporation, 
and makes a contract with the clergy, by which 
they renounce the liberty wherewith Christ hath 
made them free in return for their daily bread, 
— all this line of procedure will be of no avail. 
We have got into the existing difficulty by 
abandoning the teaching of the Prayer Book, 
by seeking to make the Church infallible, by 
substituting tradition for God's Word, and put- 
ting a burden on the creeds which they are not 
able to carry. 

The relief from the evils of the situation may 
be sought in two ways. (1) We may return to 
the original interpretation of the clause, "born 
of the Virgin Mary/' impressing upon our minds, 
as we recite it, how it means that the Son of God 



216 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 



was actually born into this world of a human 
mother. St. Paul has given the equivalent ex- 
pression, "Born of a woman, born under the 
law/' We must keep constantly before us the 
interpretation of the Creed, as given in the 
Church Catechism, for it is one of the most 
valuable guarantees of spiritual liberty we pos- 
sess. Whatever the Creed may contain in the 
way of subordinate statement, what we chiefly 
learn from it is the doctrine of the Divine 
Fatherhood as based on the creation, the doc- 
trine of the Divine Sonship as including the 
redemption of all mankind in Christ, the doc- 
trine of the Holy Spirit as sanctifying the people 
of God, in order to bring them into the fellow- 
ship of the Father and the Son. This is what 
we are also chiefly to teach ; and this is what the 
Creed means, not only in the daily office, but 
also at baptism, and in the visitation of the 
sick, or at the burial of the dead. 

And (2) there is a provision made in the 
rubric of the English book before all the creeds, 
— Apostles', Nicene, or Athanasian, — that they 
be "sung or said." In the American book the 
word "sung" has been omitted, but we may 
think no special significance attaches to the 
omission. It was the opinion of Dr. Arnold 
of Rugby that the creeds should always be 



MODERN SENSITIVENESS 217 



sung. There has never been any authoritative 
decision as to the significance of their liturgical 
use, nor is there to-day any common under- 
standing. If they are sung they pass into the 
rank of the great hymns, the Te Deum and the 
Gloria in Excelsis, where misunderstandings 
disappear. Recited in their original sense, in 
every clause, they can no longer be. They have 
been put to the test of Scripture, as Article viii 
requires, and the clauses, "He descended into 
heir' and the "resurrection of the flesh/' have 
not stood the test. But as hymns expressing the 
faith of the Church of the early centuries, they 
will retain their dignity and importance, — a 
revelation of the human soul responding to 
the Divine call ; which if they become the sub- 
ject of controversy and business contract they 
must lose. So long as we have the Word of God 
containing all things necessary to salvation, the 
creeds are not indispensable. They might be 
omitted from the offices of the Church and the 
Christian faith not be impaired. But as sum- 
maries of the convictions of the Christian 
heart in past ages, as ties binding us to the one 
common Christian life and experience in every 
age, they are invaluable, the most precious 
heritage of our historical faith, although not its 
complete expression. 



INDEX 



Absolution, 25. 
Acquileja, Creed of, 55. 
Ambrose, baptismal creed in the 

time of, 47, 136. 
American Episcopal Church, 51, 

57, 90- 

Anglican Church, 3 ff., 17 ff., 21, 
24, 40. 

Apocryphal Gospels, 136. 

Apollinaris, denial of the human- 
ity of Christ, 131, 141. 

Apostles Creed, 18, 20; its origin 
and character, 32, 35, 36, 37 ; 
relation of, to the time when 
it originated, 36 ff. ; diverse 
interpretations of, 42 ff. ; a pro- 
test against Gnosticism, 113; 
fusion with Nicene Creed, 133. 

Apostolic Fathers, 205, 206. 

Aquinas, 11, 50. 

Arians, their acceptance of Vir- 
gin-birth, 129. 
Aristides, on Virgin-birth, 205. 
Armada, 162. 

Arnobius, "Apology" of, 207. 

Arnold, Dr. Thomas, of Rugby, 
on use of the Creeds, 216. 

Ascension of Christ, interpreta- 
tions of, 59. 

Asia Minor, 106, 113, 123, 125, 

133, 155- 
Athanasius, on the Incarnation, 
54, 56; citation from, 121. 



Athenagoras, " Apology w of, 207. 
Atonement, 13. 

Augustine, 50, 117 ff. ; view of 
the Incarnation, 120, 137 ff , ; 
on the sinlessness of Mary, 
122 ; on the mention of Christ- 
mas, 133 ; on the Virgin-birth, 
131 (note), 149, 158; citation 
from, 164. 

Baptism, 27 ; formula of, 39 ; 

formula of, as expanded in the 

Creed, 46 ; Roman office for, 46. 
Becon, on descent into hell, 56; 

citation from, 177. 
Biblical criticism, 29, 31. 
Briggs, C. A., citation from, on 

the Virgin-birth, 204. 
Brooks, Bishop Phillips, 181. 
Buddhism, 105. 
Bushnell, Horace, 181. 
Butler, Archer, quotation from, 

145 ff. 

Butler, Bishop, citation from 

Analogy of, 201. 
Byzantine Church, 122. 

Caesarea, Creed of the Church in, 
126. 

Calvin, citation from Institutes of, 
174. 

"Catholic," interpretations of the 
word, 61. 



219 



220 



INDEX 



Catholic Church, definition of, 8, 
9 ; the new society, 37, 38 ; its 
motive, 104. 

" Catholic " Tradition, 76, 77, 99. 

Cerinthus, 128. 

Chalcedon, Council of, 140, 165, 

167, 169. 
Christmas festival, 133. 
Christ, 3,4; the test of Scripture, 

29 ff. ; His birth and death, 103 ; 

His humanity, 105 ; His Mes- 

siahship, 214. 
Church, infallibility of, 10, 26. 
Church Catechism, 2 (note), 15, 

43, 5°> 79- 
Church of England, 161. (See 

Anglican Church.) 
Clement of Alexandria, 112, 125, 

208. 

Coleridge, on the creeds, 101 ; 
comment of on theotokos, 168; 
citations from, on the Virgin- 
birth, 184 ff. 

Communion of Saints, interpre- 
tations of, 62. 

Confessions of the Eastern 
Church, 69. 

Confirmation, 77. 

Constantine, vision of, 198. 

Cranmer, Archbishop, 12, 24, 26, 
29, 46, 97, 166. 

Creation, contrast with emana- 
tion, 53. 

Creeds, reference of Articles to, 
7 ; use of, at Baptism, 46 ; 
various interpretations of, 53 ff., 
95 ; value of, 81 ; liturgical use 
of, 200 (note). 

Creighton, M., late Bishop of Lon- 
don, citation from, 14, 30. 



Cyprian, baptismal creed in the 

time of, 47. 
Cyril of Jerusalem, 124 (note), 

134. 

Deism, 12, 51. 

Descent into hell, 32 ff., 55, 217. 
Docetism, 105. 

Dorner, citations from, 141 (note), 
143, 145, 196. 

Duchesne, on the cult of the Vir- 
gin Mary in the Roman Church, 
159 (note). 

Eastern Creeds, 32. 
Ebionites, 128. 
Endless punishment, 66. 
Ephesus, Council of, 151. 
Epiphanius, 134. 
Erasmus, 12. 

Eve and Mary, comparison of, 
123. 

Evening Prayer, 25. 

Facundus of Hermiane, baptismal 

profession in the time of, 48. 
Female deities, 132. 
Forgiveness of sins, 25, 38, 63. 
Formularies of faith in the reign 

of Henry VIII, 44. 
Fourth General Council, 7 (see 

Chalcedon, Council of) . 
Froude, J. A., 162 (note). 
Future state, as conceived by 

Homer and Virgil, 36. 

Gelasian Sacramentary, 48 (note). 
General Councils, 5, 6, 7, 27, 
140. 

Gnosticism, 38. 



INDEX 



221 



Gnostics, their relation to Virgin- 
birth, 129. 

God, majesty of, 23 ; conscious- 
ness of, 25 ; consciousness of, in 
history, 161; consciousness of, 
at the Reformation, 43. 

Gospel of the Infancy, 80 (see 
Virgin-birth). 

Greek Church, 5, 15, 21, 40, 52. 

Greek Ordinal, 87. 

Gregory of Nazianzum, 6 (note). 

Hampden, Bishop, 20. 

Harnack, on the Creed, 63 ; on 

the Incarnation, 141. 
Helvidian heresy, 132. 
Henry VIII, 20. 

Holy Ghost, the, see Holy Spirit, 

115, 117, 119. 
Holy Spirit, the, 144, 210. 
Homilies, 71 ff. 
Hutton, R. H., 181. 

Ignatian epistles, 134. 
Ignatius, 106 ff., 205. 
Incarnation, 4, 53, 54, 80, 125, 

137 ff., 140, 142; Church of 

England, doctrine of, 165 ; see 

Anglican Church. 
" Institution of a Christian Man," 

70. 

Irenaeus, 123. 

Isaiah, Ch. VII, v. 14, 123. 
Isis, worship of, 132. 

Jerome, 5, 56. 

Jerusalem, creed of the Church in, 
126. 

Jewell, citations from " Apology " 
of, 175- 



Joan of Kent, 178. 

John of Damascus on the Com- 
munion of Saints, 63 (note) ; 
on the Incarnation, 142 ff., 159, 
167. 

Judicial Committee of the Privy 
Council, decision of, on " Life 
Everlasting," 65. 

Julian the Apostate, 35. 

Justification, 23. 

Justin Martyr, 123, 206. 

Kingsley, Charles, 181. 

Lactantius, "Apology" of, 207. 

Laity, place of, in Church of Eng- 
land, 21, 22; how far creeds 
are binding on, 92. 

Last Judgment, interpretations of, 
60. 

Latimer, Bishop, on the sinless- 

ness of Mary, 176. 
Laurentius Valla, criticism on the 

Apostles' Creed, 42. 
" Legal fiction," 92 ff. 
Leontius of Byzantium, 140. 
Leo the Great, 1 50. 
Life everlasting, interpretations 

of, 65. 

Lord Bacon, influence of, 13. 
Luther, 29, 97, 196. 
Lutheran Church, 13, 23, 24. 

Maine, Sir Henry, on "legal 

fiction," 93. 
Manning, Rev. W., citation from, 

214 (note). 
Marcion, 113. 

Mary, 4, 43 (see Virgin Mary) ; 



222 



INDEX 



immaculate conception of, 
189. 

Maurice, F. D., 91, 181. 
McGiffert, A. C-, on the Apostles' 

Creed, 102 (note), 114, 115. 
Methodius, oration attributed to, 

152. 

Michael Angelo, 195. 

Middle Ages, 11, 16, 39. 

Minucius Felix, 208. 

Mithra, religion of, 34, 35. 

Mohammedanism, 37. 

Monasticism, 177. 

Monastic vows, 97. 

Montanism, 38. 

Morning Prayer, 25. 

Mother of God, 4 (see also Theo- 

tokos), 5, 7, 131, 149. 
Mulford, Republic of God, 60. 

National Church, authority of, 
169. 

"Necessary Doctrine and Erudi- 
tion for any Christian Man," 
70. 

Nestorius, 151. 

Newman, Cardinal, 97, 141, 154, 
166. 

Nicasa, Council of, 130. 

Nicene Creed, 16, 45, 54, 79, 127, 

133- 

Niceta, on Communion of Saints, 
62. 

Nowell's Catechism, citation from, 
212. 

Ordinals, 79. 

Oriental religion, 36, 37, 105. 
Origen, on the Roman Creed, 
no; comment on Isaiah, Ch. 



VII, v. 14, 124; on the Incar- 
nation, 125. 
Oxford movement, 61. 

Pearson, Bishop, 12, 49 ff., 56, 57, 

65. 

Pelagius, 122. 
Peter the Lombard, 50. 
Plumtre, E. H., 58 (note). 
Prayer book, 3, 11, 12, 22, 23, 
24 ff. 

Predestination, 2, 23. 
Priesthood of all Christians, 23. 
Protestant scholasticism, 49, 51. 
u Protevangelium Jacobi," 207 

(note) . 
Pseudo Ignatius, 134. 
Puritanism, n, 13, 28. 
Pusey, E. B., 98, 166. 

Reformation, 3, n, 16, 20, 21, 22. 
25, 28. 

Reformed Church, 23, 24, 40. 

Renaissance, 36, 42, 160. 

Resurrection, interpretations of, 
58 ; of the body, 32 ff., 63 ; of 
the flesh, 36, 37. 

Robertson, F. W., sermons of, 
60 ; citation from, on the hu- 
manity of Christ, 191. 

Roman Catholic Church, 5, 13, 21, 
40 ; dogmatic system of, 52 ; 
errors of, 84. 

Roman ordinal, 16, 79, 87. 

Romanticism, influence of, 21 1. 

Ruflnus, commentary of, on the 
Creed, 44, 45 ; on the descent 
into Hell, 55, 124 (note). 

Rules of faith, in Apostolic Age, 
103. 



INDEX 



223 



Saracens, 155. 

Satan, victory of Christ over, 55. 

Scholasticism, 11, 12. 

Scripture, authority of, 10, 14, 
17 ff., 27, 28, 72 ff., 81, 163; 
Why the Word of God, 27; 
Anglican conception of, 27 ff. 

Seekers' "Lectures on the Cate- 
chism," citation from, 213. 

Second General Council, 134. 

Session of Christ, interpretations 
of, 59. 

Slattery, C. L., 39 (note). 
Socrates, the historian, citation 

from, 151. 
St. John, Gospel of, 126. 
Subscription, to creeds, 78, 80, 

89 ff. 

Swainson, reference to, 46 (note), 
47, 48 (note), 102 (note). 

Tarsians, Epistle to, 109. 
Tertullian, 36 (note), 112. 
Theodoret, "Dialogues" of, 153. 
Theotokos, 4, 150, 167 (see 
Mother of God). 



Thirty-nine Articles, 2, 12, 15, 83. 
Tract, xc, 98. 

Trent Council of, 15, 28 (note), 

63, 69, 169. 
Trinity, doctrine of, 3, 26, 39, 

52. 

Vigilantius, opposition of, to 

Worship of Saints, 63. 
Vincentius of Lerins, 61 (note). 
Virgin-birth, 107 fF., 135 ; modern 

sensitiveness on the subject of, 

183 ff. 

Virgin Mary, 72, 101, 118, 131; 

prayers offered to, 153. 
Vows of the clergy, 81, 82. 

Wesley, John, 51. 

Westminster Confession, 16, 28 

(note), 41, 49? 6 9- 
Whitefield, 51. 

Williams, Isaac, autobiography 
of, 97. 

Worship in Anglican Church, 25. 
Zwinglian Church, 23. 



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